


Navigating By The Stars At Night

by ivorygates



Series: No Quarter [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Blood and Torture, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Prostitution, Slave Trade, Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:29:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>All she really wants out of the rest of her life is to never see the Furlings again and to have some safe place to fuck Daniel's brains out until she dies. It's not much, but she's learned to live with diminished expectations.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>What happened to Dani before the events of Shell Game</p>
            </blockquote>





	Navigating By The Stars At Night

She steps through the Stargate. They're in the Gate Room waiting for her. Another SG-1.

Wearing black. That's different. Covert Ops uniform. She's only worn it twice. She looks around. Jack is here -- older than she remembers; more grey in his hair. Daniel -- she's male in this universe; but they'd already told her that. Sammy. Teal'c. She walks slowly down the ramp, getting her bearings.

Something odd. Something off. Her heart beats faster, looking from Jack to Daniel. Her touchstones for strangeness, because she knows them best. She wonders if the Furlings have already come here. It's possible. Anything's possible.

But she reaches the foot of the ramp, steps over the black-and-yellow line, stops. Sammy comes forward, under the guns of the Armed Response Team. Her head is cocked as if she's listening, and Dani knows that this-Sammy is trying to sense the presence of _naquaadah_ in her blood. Then she pats Dani down with brisk efficiency.

No pack, no weapons, no GDO -- and certainly no controller for the Mirror. Dani left them all at the other Stargate. She won't risk losing them here.

"She's clean, sir," Sammy says, stepping back.

"Welcome to Earth," Jack says. There's no welcome in his voice. She's not sure what she expected.

Daniel smiles faintly. It's not really an expression.

#

General Hammond is here -- another familiar/unfamiliar face. They're aware of the Quantum Mirror, but apparently they left theirs on P3R-233. They don't tell her why; she doesn't expect them to. She tells them her story: she's gotten good at it by now. She's Danielle Jackson, Daniel Jackson's quantum double from another universe. Her own universe has been destroyed (several universes have, actually; she'll get to that later) and she's the only survivor.

"You want what? Asylum?" Jack asks.

_'You looking for a place to hide out?'_

_'She's cuter than you are, Dannyboy.'_

_'You gonna be as much trouble as the one we already got?'_

She's done this so many times.

"I've come to warn you about an alien race called the Furlings. You may already know them as one of the Four Great Races. You might have seen their writings at a place called Heliopolis -- the 'Place of our Legacy.'"

"Yes," Daniel agrees, nodding slightly.

"I don't know if they're evil, but they're alien. If they haven't come here yet, they're going to come. They'll offer to give you gifts. They won't want anything in return. If you accept anything at all from them, your world will be destroyed."

Jack and General Hammond stare at her in disbelief. Daniel looks interested.

"How?" Jack says.

 _'Even for a_ Goa'uld _, that's a pretty lame opening line.'_

_'You don't honestly expect us to believe that.'_

_'I'm sorry. Help me out here. I'm just trying to figure out how a bunch of cute little furry guys with presents are going to blow up Earth. That's what you said, right?'_

"It varies. They offer you advanced weapons and power sources. You take them, and sometimes war breaks out on Earth over who gets them. Sometimes the _Goa'uld_ attack because you have them. Sometimes I think they just explode."

"How many times have you done this?" Daniel asks.

She tries to remember, and can't. "Ten? Twelve?"

"Everybody went for it?" Jack asks.

She looks at him -- away from Daniel -- but she can't read his face or his body, and his voice isn't really telling her anything. Is this contempt? Resignation? Anger? All those other Earths, those other failures. Earth destroyed through greed, stupidity. Jack had usually believed her -- Daniel had, _Dani_ had -- but not the Pentagon.

She doesn't answer.

"Colonel O'Neill? Do you think this woman is who she claims to be?" General Hammond asks.

"Let's see what the Doc has to say. Ladies first," he adds.

#

She sees no one she knows in the Infirmary. If she's still here tomorrow, she'll ask about Janet. There's an MRI, confirming what Sammy already knows: no _Goa'uld_. Blood-draw, epithelial swab (for the DNA comparison to Daniel's; all this is familiar), dental X-rays (more comparisons, and they'll be quicker). Sammy stays with her throughout.

"Anything we can get you?" Sammy asks.

"Food. Coffee. A clean uniform. I'd like to make my report as soon as possible."

"I'll see what we can do. Danielle."

But her own Sammy never called her that.

#

The debriefing would take longer if she hadn't been through this so many times before. In the middle of it, the lab results come back: she _is_ genetically-identical (as far as possible) to Daniel Jackson. It doesn't settle the question of whether she's lying to them, Jack says.

"I know," she says wearily. "You take an average of four days to make up your minds to trust me. It doesn't affect what I'm telling you, though, and you might need that information sooner."

There aren't any questions when she's finished. They've asked them all before -- other thems, elsewhere -- so she can answer them as she goes, including the question of why she comes to talk to them at all. There was one universe -- she'd dialed Earth, and her GDO flashed green so she walked through, even though she couldn't raise anyone on her radio -- where she walked into an empty SGC. (Locked down, silent, as empty as First Daniel's had been). There was Furling script on the blackboard in his office (or maybe it was her office, she didn't stay long enough to find out), and she thinks the Furlings must have been there too. So she isn't (she tells herself) dooming the SGC (all the SGCs) by coming to them. Her presence or absence doesn't make a difference (she's pretty sure) to whether the Furlings will come. But she can try to warn them.

"Very ... helpful," Jack says when she's done.

_'So, General, do we put up streamers in the Gate Room? Throw a welcoming party?'_

_'So, General, do we just shoot ourselves now? Or do we wait for these Furries to show up?'_

_'I'm missing_ The Simpsons _for this. Carter, you got any bright ideas?'_

They tried burying the Gate in one universe. The Furlings brought another one with them.

"I'm sure we'll have more questions after I've talked to the Pentagon, Dr. Jackson," General Hammond says, getting to his feet.

Dani stands as well. "Yes, General."

#

Daniel walks her down to temporary quarters. She's done this so many times before, too. Dani doesn't hope she can save this reality; she's stopped hoping for that, really. She only hopes to be able to rest for a little while.

She steps through the door. And after Daniel shuts the door behind him, he steps in front of her, turning to face her, stepping close. She looks up at him, faintly puzzled.

"No cameras in here," he says, and as she's trying to work out why this should be an important conversational point -- surely they want to keep her under observation? -- he kisses her.

She steps backward in shock -- this is nothing she expected -- but the wall is behind her, and the unexpected collision makes her open her mouth. Apparently this is what he's waiting for; she feels his tongue brush hers.

His hands are on her shoulders and he presses her firmly back against the wall, bearing down with enough force to make her notice, not enough to hurt. But he isn't touching her anywhere else, only hands and lips. And while she isn't exactly resisting, she isn't cooperating, either.

At least at first.

Because her Evil Twin -- and he has to be evil, or at least crazy, to be doing something like this -- isn't at all discouraged by her stunned indifference, nor does he seem to have anywhere to go, or anything better to do than simply stand here and eat her mouth. It's precisely the right word, she decides, desperately uncertain of what to do with her own tongue at this exact moment, because 'to devour' would imply a consuming -- in every sense of the word -- passion. And there's no passion in this. It's a clinical exploration, distant, impersonal...

...and entirely expert.

When could _she_ have ever learned to kiss like this? When would she have had the _time?_ But he's supposed to be her, exactly the same except for one chromosomal blip and a few lapses of history. He always has been, everywhere, but this is no one she can imagine being. Daniel sucks her lower lip into his mouth and bites down on it gently, running his tongue over it, and that's when she gives up -- or in, or out -- and licks back at his lip, pushing forward. He sucks her tongue into his mouth and grazes it lightly with his teeth. She retreats. He advances. She barely notices when he starts unbuttoning her BDU jacket.

"I wondered what that would be like," he says at last, breaking the kiss. Or is it: _You wondered what that would be like._ She isn't sure. Either is true, she realizes. His eyes are half-lidded, staring into hers. An expression she's never seen in the mirror, or on the faces of any of the other Daniel Jacksons she's met. It isn't really an expression at all.

His hand comes up, the knuckles skimming over the fabric of her t-shirt, to her breast. Two layers of fabric there, t-shirt and sports-bra, but the nipple is hard enough to feel, and it hardens further as he drags his thumbnail across it.

"H'm. Yes," he says, as if he's just had a theory confirmed.

 _Daniel, what are you-- In god's name, what are you doing?_ She can't manage to say the words aloud.

He circles her nipple with his thumb and does it again. She jerks; she can't help herself. He brushes his lips over hers, and she wants him to kiss her again so much she aches with it. He has the ball of his thumb pressed against her nipple now, brushing it back and forth, and none of this makes any _sense_ , but she feels as if her entire body has been dipped in fire. Suddenly she can feel every centimeter of the clothing she's wearing against her skin.

"Would you come if I kept doing this?" he murmurs against her mouth. "Or would I need to try something else?"

She doesn't know which question to answer.

He takes his hand away. She realizes she wants to protest; realizes he knows it too; there's a faint flicker of amusement. Not in his eyes, but behind them. Her face is hot; shame, outrage: she has no idea what reaction is appropriate. This is appallingly beyond anything she'd ever imagined to be possible.

He runs his hand down her body to her waist, fingertips skimming over fabric, and she can feel it as explicitly as if he were touching her naked skin. His hand goes to her belt and he flips the buckle open, then puts a finger through the webbing and pulls, slowly, until the belt slips free of the buckle and drops open. _He's going to kill her._

She jerks in reflexive panic, whipping her head to the side, every muscle suddenly tense. Because this is how death begins.

"Shh-- Shh--" He stops moving, his hand on her hip, until she goes still again. She's panting with fear, but not of him. Not of anything here. "Hush. It's all right."

She looks back at him, toward the sound of his voice. Nothing will ever be all right again; his words are meaningless. But his calmness calms her, and as her breathing slows, he starts to unbutton her fly. His other hand is still on her shoulder; it hasn't moved. When she's completely unbuttoned he slides his hand between her legs. Before she can think of what to do about it, he kisses her again. And before she can decide what to do about _that_ , he's worked the crotch of her underwear aside, not even bothering to pull them down, and slides his fingers into her.

It's easy, because she's wet.

She hasn't touched him once.

The back of his thumb is resting against her, _pushing_ against her, and she rises up on her toes, sliding up the wall, because this feels too good; it tightens her nipples to the point of pain. She clenches around him even while she's trying to escape, and his hand moves with her, maintaining a constant gentle pressure, as clinical as his kiss.

Now he releases her mouth, so that she can drag in a harsh lungful of air as he licks the pulsepoint beneath her ear. The fingers inside her curl, and he spreads them, working them lightly back and forth inside her as he rocks his hand against her.

 _"Please--"_ Her legs ache from standing on tip-toe, and what he's doing is intolerable. He has to stop or do more; she can't bear this. But when she tries to press herself against his fingers he simply moves with her, maintaining that light teasing connection.

"M'm." He makes a humming sound against her throat -- approval, acknowledgement. She can feel the vibrations of his voice all the way down to the pit of her stomach, and she squirms, but it doesn't get her anywhere. He slides his fingers out of her, then back in. Three fingers now, and he rocks them in and out, slow and gentle, but slow and gentle isn't going to take her where she needs to go. The intensity keeps building and there doesn't seem to be any end to it; not orgasm, just spiraling sensation that will go on forever. Her heart is beating so hard it shakes her, and she's pressing back against the wall as hard as she can -- back, palms, head -- not to get away, but just to hold herself up. Her legs are trembling and she can't draw a full breath, and she thinks he could keep her on the edge like this forever.

Finally he raises his head, and now his cheek is pressed against hers. His skin is faintly rough; he hasn't shaved recently. She can feel his breath on her ear, and it makes her hips stutter forward. This time he doesn't pull away; he cocks his wrist, and his fingers are still inside her, but his knuckle skims lightly over her clit and she makes a strangled gagging sound.

"Who did you want to have put you up against a wall this way?" His voice is so soft that she wouldn't be able to hear it if his lips weren't right next to her ear. It isn't even a whisper. "Tell me."

But she can't. She can't say the name aloud. Dani shudders and quivers and gasps with Daniel's fingers inside her, and all she can manage is a desperate whining sound as if she's being strangled. But it's enough. They both know it's enough.

"Where?"

"His-- his office," she stammers, because even though she'd never thought about it, never thought about _the forbidden thing_ , a part of her must have, because now her mind presents her with the fantasy, fully detailed and lovingly-polished, vivid enough to make her writhe.

"When?"

"A-a-a-after a mission," she manages to grind out, because the things he's doing to her are making it almost impossible to talk. The fingers inside her are spread and pressing, and he's moving his thumb over her clit, but he won't give her the rhythm and the pressure that she needs to come.

"How did the mission go?"

"Badly." And then they fight; they always fought; she pushed Jack constantly, for good reasons and stupid ones and because there was nothing else she could have of him, but this time she pushes too far and she's up against the wall of the office, in the security camera's blind-spot, and he's pressing into her -- _like this not like this_ \-- and then he's inside her, lifting her up off the floor and her hands dig into his back and her shoulders hit the wall with every thrust--

"He's dead. They're all dead. You're never going to see them again."

And as she jerks -- in surprise, in shock -- Daniel moves his hand in her, on her, hard, ruthlessly, and she cries out in protest, in agony, as she's wrenched away from fantasy, from memory, as he finally makes her _(lets her)_ , come.

She's so dazed afterward that she doesn't realize at first that he's holding her. But his arms are around her and her head is on his shoulder, and her breath is hitching in dry tearless sobs. If he weren't holding her up, she'd fall. She's holding onto his jacket in back, tight handfuls of fabric stretching it taut in front. His body radiates heat like a furnace; she can feel him everywhere they're pressed together. No matter how cool his emotions are, his body is not.

As afraid -- appalled? dismayed? -- as she was at his touch before, what frightens her most now is that he'll let go, and she'll have to think about the next thing, the thing that comes after. Because it's as if his words have made the truth real. She feels as if she's drowning, sinking, that she can look up and see the surface of the water far above, where there is sun, air, _life--_

\--and she will never reach it again.

Instead she'll have to keep running, trying to warn other realities -- ghosts, shadows -- but what's the point? And she tips her head back, pulling away enough to look up at him, realizing that he already knows this. Somehow.

How?

She should ask. No matter how terrible the revelation, it can't be worse than what she already knows. She doesn't know where to begin, though, and so she lets her head drop to his shoulder again. She closes her eyes.

And she hears the sound of the door locks sliding back.

Adrenaline shocks her -- she can't let anyone see her like this -- flushed, dazed, disheveled, pants half off and ... everything. She starts to push away from him, reaching for the waistband of her trousers.

And Daniel spins her around, pinning her against his chest. His forearm presses her back against him, making her arch; a little higher and it would be around her throat. She clutches at his pinioning arm with one hand and grabs for her pants with the other, but he catches her wrist in his free hand and forces it away from her body. Her hips grind against him as she struggles -- not as hard as she could -- and she can feel that he's hard. He turns her to face the opening door just as Jack walks in.

Jack closes the door behind him, regarding the two of them unsurprised. She'd like to be able to think, to reason things through, but she can't. Not now. She stops struggling, and lets her head fall back against his shoulder. Daniel's muscles relax fractionally, but he doesn't let go of her, and Dani's grateful for that. If anyone is going to think, it will have to be her Mirror twin.

"A present, Daniel?" Jack asks.

"Thought we might try something new," Daniel answers. His voice is amused.

Jack isn't looking at her -- he's looking at Daniel -- but whatever he sees in Daniel's face decides him, because he walks over to them.

He looks at her now, and she wonders what he's looking for. Assent? Consent? She isn't sure what he -- what either of them -- expect from her, or even want. She doesn't know this man, and Jack can be a variable in the quantum equation as much as she -- her counterpart -- can. But she lifts her head, meeting his gaze. If Daniel let go of her now she'd run, but he doesn't. She's tired of having choices; she wonders if Daniel knows that.

Jack smoothes her hair back from her face, tucking it meticulously behind her ears before he kisses her. There's nowhere for her to go now even if she wanted to, and she doesn't want to, not really. This is surreal beyond madness, and it's almost soothing.

He's pressing her back against Daniel. Daniel has released her wrist now; his hand is between them, on Jack, and he's leaning forward, over her shoulder, whispering into Jack's ear the way he whispered into hers, and she wonders if he's still talking about the dead. What dead does Jack have, here? What dead does Daniel know?

She's never kissed Jack. She kissed a man named Jonah once, who was almost Jack, when she was a woman named Carlyn, but she's never kissed Jack. It doesn't seem right. She feels awkward, improper. She wonders if he can taste Daniel on her mouth. Then Daniel's hand comes up. He strokes her hair, and his touch finally makes her lean into Jack's kiss, but Daniel's hand moves to her shoulder, and he steps away, releasing her, pushing her to her knees.

Daniel's gotten Jack unbuckled and unbuttoned; she can see that Jack's already hard. She realizes what they expect. And its better (more intimate, less intimate, so impossible that it's somehow _all right_ ). She's seen Jack naked more times than she can count, starting on Argos and continuing past Hathor's bed, seen him sick, injured, covered in mud, or just in the decontamination showers, but this is the first time she's ever been on her knees in front of him preparing to take his cock down her throat.

Something Hathor never did.

She reaches up to the waistband of his boxers and pulls them carefully out and down. His cock springs free and she leans in, letting it tap against the side of her jaw; a promise. She feels the heat of his body, smells the musk-scent, softer and sweeter than the smell of any other part of his body. Oh, god, she knows this man is not her Jack. But she could find him in the _dark._

She slides her hand further forward to cup his balls, pressing her wrist against his thigh to trap the waistband of his boxers, then takes his cock carefully between thumb and two fingers of her other hand, holding him steady, and laps at the head. She takes a moment to breathe, carefully, then sucks him in, just the tip at first, making sure her teeth are securely behind her lips. (Not her first barbeque at all, as General Hammond always used to say, though probably never in quite this context). Jack makes a faint huffing sound of approval, and the sound of his pleasure reminds her body that it's just been kissed and stroked and fondled and brought to climax. His hand is on the crown of her head. Not pushing. Just touching her. She takes more of him -- almost down to the gag reflex this time, but she's relaxed enough to make this easy, almost floating. In and out. Suction. More tongue. She hears a groan -- Jack -- and Daniel whispers something she can't make out. She isn't really interested in listening to them anyway.

Conventional wisdom holds that there's no bang in cocksucking for the active partner -- Sammy was always vehement about that -- and what Dani's always found unfair about oral sex is that men are usually unwilling to reciprocate. But it's not as if the act itself doesn't have its charms, even leaving aside the desire to give pleasure to someone you might actually want to please. (And leaving out the power trip, something that has always disturbed her). But beyond love, beyond domination, what remains is the ability to focus absolutely on only one thing in the universe -- auto-hypnosis if not auto-eroticism -- and shut the rest of the world out.

She's drooling and it can't be helped. Sex -- good, bad, indifferent, appalling -- is messy. She slurps around the cock in her mouth, resisting the abrupt urge to giggle. Men always take it the wrong way, but it really has nothing to do with them, or with where she is right now. Just cognitive dissonance and symbolic association. And the fact that, in a way actually having very little to do with sex, this is fun. She likes being good at things. And a good blow-job requires complete concentration. It's very Zen. Concentration to be able to breathe; concentration not to bite; concentration to keep the gag reflex from kicking in; to provide the proper level of stimulation...

Daniel's hand cups the back of her head, cradling it; Jack lifts his hand away. Daniel's thigh is pressed against her back, close enough to support her, but leaving her the room to move as much as she needs to. She doesn't need a hand on Jack's cock now so she reaches up, placing her hand on his hip for support and orientation. Someone's fingers stroke the back of her hand briefly.

She doesn't need to wonder what they're doing up there. She knows. They're kissing. And the thought of Daniel kissing Jack the way Daniel kissed her -- only it will be more intimate than that, she knows absolutely, because they are more to each other -- lets her open her throat and take his cock all the way down, licking and swallowing and nuzzling at Jack's groin for a long moment before she has to come back up for air. She can feel the wet pulse of climax between her legs and the breathless desire -- physical, emotional -- to please, to tend, to touch and to be touched. . .

Jack's getting close now. She can tell. His hips are bucking as he tries not to fuck her throat, but she wants to give him what he needs in the best way possible. She pulls back for a moment, taking a deep breath, then slides back down, fucking her mouth on him steadily while pulling him gently toward her -- hand on his balls, hand on his hip -- encouraging him to _move_ , to set the pace.

Daniel's fingers tighten on the back of her skull, warning her. He holds her head steady as Jack thrusts into her mouth, down her throat, and when she feels the tiny puff of air hit the back of her throat, she pulls back a fraction and sucks as hard as she can. Suddenly her mouth is full -- she can feel the pulse and fizz along the shaft as he comes, feel his balls rise and tighten in her hand. She gulps, swallows, licks, swallows again, sucking at him until he pulls away.

She opens her eyes, easing her hand out of his boxers, careful not to snap the elastic. He pulls them up. She sits back on her heels, wiping her mouth and chin with the back of her hand. She licks her lips. She can taste him.

"Do you know--" Daniel begins.

But whatever he means to say is lost. Suddenly the lights of the room go red and begin to flash, and a moment later the klaxon begins to sound.

Daniel lifts her to her feet, reaching around her to pull her pants up and button them. Not all the buttons, there isn't time, but the top two are enough to hold them in place. He springs toward the door, yanking it open; she only hopes Jack's had time to make himself presentable, but Daniel's running down the corridor to the elevators and she's running after him. It's instinct.

The PA is blaring a recorded message. _Unauthorized Offworld Activation._ There can be a dozen causes for that but Dani's living an eternal nightmare now, and in that nightmare there can only be one.

Jack's hand is in the small of her back, pushing her forward; faster, faster, and she can barely keep from tripping over her own feet as she runs. They reach the elevator and she doesn't slow down, just slips through the opening doors, caroming off Daniel. She buckles her belt and closes as many buttons on her fly as she can manage as they drop a dozen floors -- Daniel is checking Jack over; quick, brisk, professional; making sure everything is in order -- and then they're out again. Running.

The three of them barely pause in the Control Room. The iris is in place, but she knows it won't do any good. They manage to get down to the Gate Room floor just as the Furling walks through the iris.

It's come for her so fast. But she's managed to deliver most of her message, the important part, and if they'll just _believe_ her, and not bargain...

And if they'll let her run, and it follows, then perhaps she can count a victory here.

The Response Team is already here, and Jack looks at her, and she nods -- _yes, this is the creature I told you about_ \-- and before she can suggest that she be the one to talk to it -- she's always the one it always wants to talk to, and if she could only be sure it would leave other Earths, other Daniels, alone she'd stop coming to them -- Jack yanks the M60 out of the hands of the nearest airman and empties the entire clip into the Furling.

The sound is deafening.

She hadn't known what he was going to do. Jack wouldn't do this. This isn't Jack, not her Jack, so far from the Jack she knows in every way, and _this won't work--_

And she looks at Daniel, horrified--

And Daniel is laughing. He's shouting something, but she can't hear it over the gunfire. And he's _laughing._

She's gone mad.

The clip is empty. Silence.

She doesn't know where the bullets have gone. The Furling is unharmed.

And Jack--

And Daniel--

_\--died/came back/never wanted to see this--_

Daniel is walking toward it.

"I'm not letting you do this!" Jack roars.

He lunges for Daniel. He could stop him -- the way the Furlings could stop her -- but Daniel steps back and raises his hand, and Jack stops, as if Daniel has a power here she can't see.

"Maybe it will change things," Daniel says, and his serenity is frightening. He's smiling, but it isn't a human expression. It's the smile on the face of the archaic Apollo, god of madness and prophecy.

 _"Daniel--!"_ Jack cries, but it's a plea now. A petition to a god that the god will never grant. And Daniel turns away and starts walking toward the Furling again, holding out his hands.

She came too late to save this world.

#

Dani struggles awake, and for a moment she still hears the Gate Room klaxons, but then the sound shifts from sleeping to waking, and it's only late-summer crickets.

 _No, it's frogs. Daniel said they were frogs._ She takes a deep breath, willing herself all the way awake, feeling, irrationally, as if she's still in the dream (drowning, looking up at the receding light of the surface that flickers like the event horizon of the Stargate). A nightmare. That's all. And not one of the bad ones. Not bad enough to make her wake him. He's still asleep.

She rolls over -- cautiously -- hearing and feeling the hay crackle beneath the blanket -- and gulps back a sneeze. Hay and wool and dust and a whole world of things in bloom outside, and her antihistamines are long gone. She'll just have to deal with it. At least they have a place to sleep, even if it's a hayloft. They even have the owner's permission. Work today -- maybe it's yesterday now -- and more in the morning -- it's still night outside; she can see a string of moons across the sky -- but they're being fed.

The unfamiliar garment she's wearing pulls at her; it's damp with sweat and it clings. A long smock; her undershift. It's summer here. Harvest time (lucky for them, as it means the farm needs extra workers, even if unskilled ones) so it's hot, even in -- especially in -- the hayloft. They're both stripped down to their underwear. Shift for her. A pair of knee-length breeches for him. He lies sprawled on top of the heavy blanket that protects them both from the hay, his skin gleaming with sweat.

When she met him, she was still in uniform, but Daniel had long since gone to native dress; he'd been living as even more of a fugitive than she had. When they made up their minds to do this, to try to make some kind of life together among the people Out Here, he gave her his spare clothes -- far too big -- so that she could pass unnoticed beyond the Gate, but they were men's clothes, and it's important to fit in wherever they go, so that means skirts and smocks for her. They traded for them, giving up the last of her things from Earth, the ones they didn't leave behind on 233. They were little more than curiosities Out Here -- and that's a relief -- but they were enough to gain her what she's wearing now. Clothes that will pass unremarked on any world they come to.

They've been to half-a-dozen planets, covering their tracks. Partly it's habit. Partly they're looking for somewhere they can fit in, because they need food and shelter and none of their old skills have any value here. No one's interested in archaeology (that they've met yet) nor does anyone need translation of the dozens of languages of Earth that they know between them. Time is hard to accurately measure when you're constantly on the move, but Dani thinks that she and Daniel have been together about a month. Twenty-seven days, anyway. It's a month somewhere.

The dream that woke her is jagged and terrifying. She can't sleep, but on a late-medieval cultural index farm in the middle of the night, she can't exactly go down to the corner Starbuck's. Find something else to think about then. Her options are limited, if she's looking for something less horrible than the scenario that woke her.

Think of the first time she saw this Daniel, then.

#

_She touches the Mirror and passes through, tapping the controller instantly to shut it down._

_Safe. For the moment._

_Her heart slows; she takes a deep breath, rubbing her fingers together. She can still feel -- she imagines -- the glyphs for 233 pressed into them. One jump ahead of the Furlings, and she doesn't know for how long she'll be safe this time._

_Or where she is -- all the details of this quantum variation -- or why it matters any more. But 233 is_ korosh-ni _\-- it's a_ Goa'uld _word that means "forbidden" -- so she needs to get out of here until she discovers whether she can stay in this universe at all, even for the few days the Furlings will allow. P3R-233 is radioactive. If she stays here, she'll die._

 _She thinks that would be best_ (to die, to sleep) _, and she'd really like to take the chance. But she's tried suicide three times now, and it hasn't worked yet. Better to go. She stuffs the controller into a pocket of her tac-vest. She'll stow it more thoroughly once she's through the Gate._

_But she lingers for a moment, gazing at the Mirror, wondering if there's a world out there through it -- somewhere, anywhere -- where the Furlings won't find her. And as she stares at it, the Mirror flickers to life once more._

__No! It's too soon! _They never come for her this quickly. And they never use the Mirror, either. They don't have to._

_She doesn't have time to hide before the man steps through, so she draws her gun. Only a few bullets left, but she can't miss at this distance. All she sees is a tall figure in a hooded cloak with a large satchel at his hip. He shuts down the Mirror just as she did. Then he turns -- he's holding a controller -- and raises his head._

_He's wearing glasses. That's odd._

_Wait._

_"Daniel?" she says._

_"Please don't shoot," he says wearily. He sounds as if he expects her to, as if being Daniel Jackson carries with it an automatic sentence of death. She lowers her gun._

_"You're Daniel Jackson," she says, wanting confirmation. A Daniel who just walked through the Mirror (not her Daniel; not the Daniel she first met, the one she knows). Does he belong here? Why is he dressed like that?_

_"You're with the SGC," he says. "Is there still an SGC here? I need to go. You need to give them a message for me."_

_"No," she says quickly. "I mean, I can't. I don't know. I just got here. But I can't contact them." He looks puzzled and she blurts out the rest. "They'll die."_

_He smiles then, as if she's said something funny. "Yeah. Hallowed be the Ori."_

_She shakes her head -- now even more baffled -- and finally holsters her gun. If this is a new Furling trick, she's too tired to fight any more. "Ori?"_

_"You've never heard of the Ori? The Priors? The_ Book of Origin _?" he asks sharply._

_"No. I told you, I just got here a few minutes ago. But if you want to meet the Furlings, they should be along in a week or so. At the outside."_

_Sometimes it takes longer, but Dani's learned not to hope. She stays away from the SGC (the SGCs) now, but if she's going to go anywhere away from P3R-233, it has to be to a Gate address she knows -- a world that's safe for her to travel to -- and she has to do that, because she needs food, water, shelter. Wherever she goes, she knows the Furlings will find her. She goes to inhabited worlds only long enough to get food, but sometimes her luck runs out._

_Daniel takes a couple of steps forward, and now he can see the patch on her shoulder. "You're SG-1? Who are you?"_

_So whatever Daniel Jackson he is, he's not from a universe where he's met a variation of her. "I'm Danielle Jackson. I'm you."_

_Daniel blinks slowly, absorbing this surprising information. The reaction is familiar; she's met a number of Daniels. It's different; this Daniel is thin, haggard, worn to exhaustion. "Alternate universes," he says slowly._

_"Yes. And I-- It's a long story."_

_"You said the people at the SGC will die if you contact them," Daniel prompts._

_"They do. They have. The Furlings... keep following me. And--" she stops. It's bad enough to know what she knows. She's told the story so many times. She's not sure she has the strength to tell it again._

_"The Ori -- their Priors -- are following me," Daniel says very quietly, and while the details might be interesting, she doesn't need them. He's here for the same reason she is. He's running, and there's nowhere left to run to._

_She takes a step forward. "Do you think they'd follow us ... together?"_

_Daniel thinks about it for a very long time. "I have no idea," he says at last. Another pause. "We could try that. Maybe it will change things."_

_"Okay," she says, light-headed with either panic or relief at the idea that finally there's something to try that offers a possibility of escape. "We need to find a universe we can both survive in." Because she can survive past the 48-hour limit in one where she's male and the reverse must be true for him, but for both of them to be able to survive, there must be no Danielle/Daniel Jackson at all._

_"There has to be one out there," Daniel says. He turns back to the Mirror. She steps up beside him. He activates the controller he's still holding, and it flares to life. "Do you want to choose?" he asks._

_"Just spin it," she says. "Something as far from here as we can find."_

_He thumbs the dial. Universes flicker beyond the Mirror, too fast to see. When it stops again, they see the lab on 233 again, but on the other side there are no artifacts on the table._

_"Okay," Daniel whispers. He reaches out a hand to her. She takes it. Together they walk to the Mirror. She raises her other hand to the Mirror._

_And they pass through._

#

They were lucky. They spent three days waiting at her usual place -- the same cave was there, and the spring, and between them they had enough food to last out the waiting period. Neither of them got sick. They went back to 233 long enough to leave behind the controllers and everything out of her pack and gear that they'd agreed they shouldn't bring with them. Giving up her ID tags and her patches was the hardest.

Then she'd changed to Daniel's spare clothes, and they'd gone on. He'd picked the destination. It wasn't one she knew. They haven't used one of her known addresses yet: out here, apparently, the Stargates function as the local equivalent of the subway system; most of the people they've met so far share Gate addresses and information about them fairly freely.

Nobody's mentioned the _Goa'uld_. Do they not exist in this universe? That would be nice. But the Stargates exist, so Daniel still worries about the Ori (the Ancients built the Stargates -- she knew that -- and the Ori come from the Ancients, at least in his universe). There's been no sign of a Prior, though. He's told her how to recognize them. And that if she sees one, there's nothing to do but run.

Dani looks down at her companion. Daniel. Her dream is still vivid: a reality that never was, could never have been, _wasn't._ If she wakes him, he'll ask her the details. What could she say? She's never touched any of her counterparts in that way. Never kissed. Never did the things in her dream. What could she say?

_I dreamed about Jack?_

Jack is dead and neither of them will ever see him again. They've made certain of that. In this universe Jack may not even have been born. Certainly neither of them (whichever of them would have been) has been born here. And at the end of a hundred days -- a nice round number -- they can be, well, as sure as they can be about anything (because she spent almost three months in one reality before she destroyed it and Daniel once went nine weeks without seeing a Prior) that their gamble has worked and neither the Furlings nor the Ori Priors will appear. A hundred days without disaster should mean they're safe. She's not sure what 'safe' will feel like.

_I dreamed about you?_

No. She won't tell Daniel that. Between them they've murdered billions -- sins of omission, sins of commission -- but she won't say that to him. It wasn't this Daniel. It wasn't any Daniel at all. It was a dream.

_"Maybe it will change things."_

Dream-Daniel said that. But Daniel -- this Daniel -- said those words as well, just before they stepped through the Mirror together this last time. So maybe the Daniel in her dream was real after all. A Daniel this Daniel could be, or _she_ could be. Or is, when all is said and done. She'll never know. Or already knows, and doesn't want to admit it.

"You're awake," Daniel says, not opening his eyes.

"I didn't mean to wake you," she says.

"Didn't really," he answers. "Come here."

It's an invitation and not a command, so she goes, settling into his arms. It's both familiar and strange; they haven't avoided touching each other, but it's not as if they've cuddled, either.

Dani isn't (wasn't) a stranger to being held. Sammy would, the two of them stuffed into one sleeping bag together on some freezing alien world. Teal'c did, sometimes; the two of them sharing watches because he didn't sleep, and she usually got first watch, dark and cold. Even Jack, when she was sick or injured. Her face is pressed into the side of Daniel's neck; she smells sweat and horses. It's comforting. She shifts, settling herself.

"Sorry," he whispers. His breath ruffles her hair. "I, ah--"

She realizes that he's hard. And -- worse -- that she's been pressing against him, rocking her hips against him, unconsciously.

"Sorry. I'm sorry," she answers, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment. She can stop moving, but she can't quite bring herself to pull away. She's wet and aching, and her nipples are so tight they hurt. It's the dream. It's him. It's everything.

"All right. It's all right," he says. He pats her shoulder, or he means to. He ends up stroking it instead. All there is between their bodies is a layer -- or two -- of sweat-damp muslin. It isn't much.

One of them should move. But it would have to be her, since she's lying almost on top of him, and she can't bear to. She wants to lick him, hold him, throw her leg across his thigh and pull him on top of her, bear his weight and make him cover her. She's pressing her face against his neck, and forces herself to lift her head. But all that does is bring them face-to-face. He's looking at her, as calmly as if she hadn't just thrown herself into his arms in the middle of the night and tried to rape him.

"I won't--" she begins. She has no idea where the sentence is going, other than that it needs to end in an apology.

"Dani." His voice is quiet, and she knows she has to move, but his hand is still on her shoulder and he isn't pushing her away. "Do you want me?" he asks.

"Yes," she answers, because it's true, and she can manage at least that much. Truth. She can still feel him -- hard, erect -- and if he doesn't want her -- how can he? -- at least he wants someone, something, as much as she does. Maybe that's enough.

"All right."

He licks his lips, leans forward, offering himself.

She moves into the kiss, body to body, her arm around his back, skin on skin. The kiss is careful but not chaste. They've already decided to have sex -- assuming nothing goes wrong on the way -- and fortunately he has no idea what's inside her head right now, the relief that this is unlike her dream. The kissing is awkward. A little uncertain. But enough -- more than enough -- so that when Daniel slides his hand down her back and takes a fistful of fabric, pulling it upward, Dani's more than ready to help.

The fabric of her shift is thin and it's damp and if it weren't sticking to her it would be billowing like a parachute. She drags the hem up to her hips, still lying down, and sits up to pull her arms down inside the sleeves -- all brisk efficiency at getting herself naked, because even if this fizzles out now, she'll be cooler without it -- and by the time she gets the thing off over her head, he's sliding his breeches down over his hips and kicking them away.

He lies back and looks at her, one hand clasping his cock, sliding the foreskin down. It's impossible not to look, so she doesn't try to hide her interest; more interest than she'd have in other circumstances, because this isn't just something that's about to be inside her (and never mind what all women tell all men, size does matter: this one is neither so large as to present a problem nor so small that its owner will present problems of another kind), but something that's _hers_ (could have been hers, if she'd been born with what Sammy used to call The Magic Door-Opening Penis of Invincibility). If she'd been a 'Daniel' instead of a 'Dani', her body would look just like this.

She wonders if Daniel's disappointed in his distaff variation. Would he prefer bigger breasts? Wider hips? Sha're was beautiful, and Dani had wished, sometimes, to look like her. Is that the sort of woman Daniel wishes he was?

Too complicated a question.

She tosses the shift aside. She'd rather lie on it bareskinned than on the blanket, but she has to wear it in the morning. She settles back down next to him, rolls against him until their bodies touch. Her mouth is next to his ear. "I'm sterile and there's nothing you can do that will hurt me," she whispers. "I haven't had sex in two years. The last SGC I was in was six months ago, I think. My bloodwork came back clean."

His arms tighten around her. "I don't know. About... I wouldn't have--"

Wouldn't have offered if he didn't think he was safe. She knows that. She doesn't know _him_ , but she knows his essence, the him-that's-her that she's met so many times. She turns her head and stops his words with her mouth.

And now she _does_ hook a leg over his. He rolls toward her until she can rest her heel against the back of his knee -- they're on their sides again -- and he moves his hand from himself to her. Finding her open, wet, ready, and even that careful assessing touch is coming close to setting her off, but it wouldn't be enough. And she doesn't want to bite him, claw at him, but she _needs_ , and she's never wanted to let anyone know that, ever, because it's weakness. _Just do it_ , she wants to say, but none of her partners have ever taken that well. She slides her hand between them, reaching for him, but he catches her wrist -- not hard, but firmly -- drawing her hand from between their bodies and resting it gently against the blanket behind her. The movement turns her half onto her back, and he looks down at her. She can't see his expression now -- his face is in shadow -- but his body-language is guarded; if he asks her now if she's sure if this is what she wants, she thinks she may bite him after all.

But he doesn't. He moves across her, positioning himself between her thighs, she settles onto her back and bends her knees. She feels his cock bump and slide across her belly, then he reaches down and pulls back, and then she can feel him pressing into her and she bears down as he pushes in, still feeling a breathless proprietary smugness at being so nicely hung. In a moment he's all the way inside her. They're pressed together, groin to chest, and the bruised sense of arousal that she feels makes her want to groan, to keen, though she hates to make noise during sex.

"I wondered what this would be like," he whispers in her ear, and the words, the pressure, drive her instantly to the edge of climax. Suddenly she can't bear for him to move, and she can't keep still. She's never been possessed by this combination of expertise and indifference before. But the expertise is -- literally -- all in her mind, isn't it? It's that the idea of the man she's with lends a perverse eroticism to a mundane act. Every muscle is locked, quivering, with the tainted intensity of this, and she bites her lip to keep from crying out. And he pulls back, and thrusts, as if he doesn't notice, or doesn't care, or means to give her exactly what she needs.

His hands slide down her body, over her hips, her ass, cupping and squeezing and lifting, and he arches away from her, hips plunging forward, thighs flexing between hers. She hears the breath rasp in his throat as he inhales, a deep open-mouthed gasp. She can't think of what to do with her hands, and finally braces them against his chest, pushing against him as if she's trying to fend him off, only she isn't. His skin slips over her as he moves, and she's certain she's about to be jarred loose from something, disconnected, about to fall.

If there's kindness in the act, there's no gentleness. His hands grip her buttocks hard enough to bruise, and he doesn't stop, doesn't slow, even as the hot aching tension coils in her belly, in her cunt, and no matter how hard she tries she can't keep silent now, grunting and gasping and whimpering as if she's being beaten. What she wants. What she needs. Her body jolts her to a second -- unexpected -- climax, and afterward (gasping for breath, too sensitive), his thrusting is only bruise-painful, but she doesn't try to stop him. She can see his face in the moonlight now. His head is thrown back, eyes tightly shut, straining as he thrusts. It's like being fucked by a machine, and she's starting to wonder if he's going to be able to climax at all. She can tell that he's gone away somewhere, inside his head, and its fairness or kindness or a sense of self-preservation (because she needs him to survive) that makes her feel that Daniel deserves what he's given her. She'd like to help -- like to make this easy for him, or good, or even possible, but she doesn't know him well enough for that. Hasn't wanted to know him; he's been only another interchangeable Daniel to her, another almost-her who will die, another not-her that she's going to have to leave behind. But she isn't going to leave him behind, is she? And neither of them is going to die.

So she takes her weight on her shoulders and lifts her hips, bracing herself, knees raised, feet flat. She's not quite sure what will do it for him, but she'll help as much as she can. She pulls her arms from between them, puts them around him, runs her hands down his back -- ribs and scars -- and over his buttocks, pulling him in.

"Yes," she whispers. Breathless. Coaxing. "Like that. Come on."

And now that she's holding him Daniel releases his death-grip on her hips and takes his weight on his hands. He stops thrusting into her for a minute. He shakes his head, gasping, and drops of sweat spray over her face and chest. She pushes up against him, pulling him into her, tightening herself around him.

With anyone else she'd be sure of what to do.

With anyone else, she wouldn't really care.

And then he's moving again, and she's urging him on, slipping out of English and down through a dozen other languages. She's hardly listening to herself -- the words don't really matter -- and fortunately, with one thing and another in her past life she developed a taste for rough impersonal sex, because apparently her counterpart shares it. She's actually rousing again under the unremitting stimulus, though on the few past occasions she's managed to get this thoroughly off (nearly all of them alone, with toys; the others involving a _Goa'uld_ sarcophagus) all she wants to do afterward is stop. But now the aching sensitivity is sliding back toward pleasure, and though she was never anything but willing, it's no longer an act of will to meet his thrusts.

And then at last -- she's just about to suggest trying something else; she could go down on him, try to get him to come that way -- Daniel shudders, gasps, makes a whining agonized sound deep in the back of his throat, and collapses onto her, his breath rasping in his throat. She's halfway to coming -- another orgasm would be possible with only a little work -- but she's so relieved that he was able to find release that she doesn't really mind that he's stopped.

She lets her legs slide down, puts her arms around him. He's trembling, gasping, almost choking, and she can feel his heart thudding hard against her chest. She reaches up to smooth back his sweat-sodden hair, feeling an emotional satiation that matches -- exceeds -- anything physical. "All right," she says, over and over. "All right. All right."

"All right?" he mumbles against her neck, the inflection turning the words from reassurance into a question. English is like that.

"Yes. Yes." Better, different, worse, it doesn't matter. At least she no longer feels as if she's the only living thing there is. There's Daniel, and he's as real as she is. That's something.

After a few more moments he raises himself up on his elbows and lifts himself carefully away, rolling to his side, facing her. They're both drenched in sweat; she can smell them. The hayloft reeks of sex. She wonders if they're going to talk now, but she still has no idea of what they'd say to each other.

He puts a hand on her belly -- the gesture is more shocking to her in its gentleness than a blow would have been -- and then, when he hears her breathing hitch -- she wasn't all the way there, but he'd gotten her started, thinking about it, anticipating it -- slides his hand lower, making a wordless sound of inquiry into her ear.

She arches her back in answer, turning her face toward his so that their lips meet. His fingers slide down through the sex-wet curls between her legs as his mouth opens over hers. He finds her clit and begins to rub it, slow careful strokes, gauging her response by the pressure of her lips and tongue against his. She draws one knee up -- the leg farther away from him -- and cocks it to the side, opening herself further. He takes that -- rightfully -- as encouragement. She murmurs approval into his mouth, lifts her hand to rest it on the back of his. Not to guide. Just to touch.

It doesn't take long at all. The wicked exoticism of her partner, or simply the fact that it's been so long since anyone has touched her. This time he's gentle, or perhaps merely careful, but she doesn't want roughness; she just wants to be touched. She stifles the sounds she needs to make out of ancient habit -- _silence is a virtue_ \-- and manage to come almost soundlessly this time, but he doesn't miss the way her muscles lock and tense as she bears down. He stops rubbing, just pressing his fingers against her, giving her an anchor to ride it out. Afterward, she feels as if she's floating. An absolute cessation of everything; it's what she's wanted most. She feels as if she can finally breathe again.

They should get up, go downstairs, wash. But she's swooning into sleep, and Daniel is already there, his hand still on her as his breathing roughens and slows. They have a few hours, at least, until dawn.

She thinks, this time, her sleep will be without dreams.

#

Daniel taps her on the chest to wake her. Dani thrashes, coming instantly awake, but he's out of reach; he learned that lesson quickly. She sits up -- sore and tender; her thighs and her cunt ache; she's sticky, and there's a damp crusty spot on the blanket beneath her.

"Time," Daniel says. He's already dressed. She hears the farmyard bell ring again. Breakfast for the laborers. Cheese and porridge and some kind of hot, mildly-alcoholic drink; she thinks it's a combination of cider and beer.

It's just dawn.

Last night could have been a dream, except that her body tells her otherwise. She wonders what Daniel thinks of having done it (of having _fucked her_ ); she's not sure what she thinks herself. She reaches for her shift, pulling it on. Boots next. When she moves off the blanket, he folds it carefully, setting it beside their packs; birds roost in the loft and their droppings are everywhere.

Skirt, tunic, headcloth. She won't bother with glasses today and neither will he, but they'll be following the reapers in the field, bundling and tying shocks of grain, so she checks her skirt-pockets to make sure she has several handkerchiefs. If they both get through the day still able to breathe, it will be a miracle.

Daniel goes down the ladder to the first floor of the barn first. She follows; the ladder is sturdy, but she still doesn't like heights. He steadies her as she nears the bottom, hand on her elbow, and she leans into him for a moment when she's down.

She thinks he'd smile at her if either of them smiled any more.

On the way out of the barn she takes one of her handkerchiefs and wets it in the watering trough. She carries it to the privy and uses it to clean herself. Not much of a bath -- and she wants one, and will want one more, later -- but it will have to do.

#

The day's work is long and hot and brutal. The men strip to the waist, the women to undershift and skirt with skirts kilted up to the knee. Dani can't lift a full bound shock into the wagon -- Daniel can -- but she can carry armfuls of grain back to the binders. There are traditions about picking up enough of the stalks but not too many; it is charity to leave grain behind in the fields for the poor. She inhales dust and chaff, coughing and sneezing. Fortunately the concept of 'summer fever' is understood here; the locals don't think either of them is sick.

When the sun is high, a wagon comes out from the house with bread, cheese, cider, and beer. There will be more in a few hours, and a lavish meal when the work is done. During the work itself, there are casks of heavily-watered beer always available -- necessary to replace salt and electrolytes; there's a reason the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids on a diet of bread and beer -- but the beer that comes with the noon meal is unwatered, because this is a rest break. The work will go on until the light begins to fail, but no rain is predicted, so there's no need to work through the hottest part of the day to get the crop in.

She's been watching Daniel all morning. Feeling a steady pulse of awareness (sexual, asexual), the sense of knowing where he is every minute, the way she'd always known where Sammy, Teal'c, Jack were when they were all beyond the Gate together -- at least until she got distracted by something (which happened far too frequently). But (in between those times) she knew. And now she knows where someone is again, and it feels like nakedness, as if her intimate, isolated world has suddenly become ... crowded.

She thinks it must be the same for him, because when she looks at him, he looks at her.

And while they've both talked: a lot -- it's been twenty-seven days, and six worlds, and sharing intel isn't just a way to pass the time, it's vital; life-saving -- it's not as if they've actually _communicated_. She knows the difference as well as he must. And not communicating, she realizes now, has actually taken a certain amount of effort, but she suspects they've both been afraid of what they'd learn.

He brought the Ori from their galaxy to his. They laid waste to its worlds, slaughtered billions, destroyed Earth. The Ascended -- a race she's never met -- sent him through the Mirror, but the Ori followed, wanting something from him -- mysterious, analogous -- that he couldn't/wouldn't/didn't dare provide.

Just like her. She met the Furlings and, armed with knowledge of the, _a_ , future, destroyed her world. And uncountable other worlds. It's agonizing to think that if she, if _he_ , had simply _never been born_ \-- had died on Abydos (the first time) -- none of that would ever have happened.

_'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!'_

She doesn't want to acknowledge her guilt. She certainly doesn't want to deal with his. But she can't pretend it isn't there. Just as she can't pretend _Daniel_ isn't there. Not any more. She's touched him, she's had him inside her. She wants that again.

What does _he_ want?

She takes her food and her beer and goes to sit beside him at the noon meal. There are hedgerows between the fields, so there's a little shade. The beer goes down like water; she's parched.

"I hate beer," Daniel says absently, drinking.

"Have the cider, then."

"Too sweet."

"You're never satisfied." She can smell him -- they're all soaked in sweat -- but new sweat doesn't smell particularly bad. It itches, though. Back at the farm they'll segregate, the men and the women, strip to their underwear and pour buckets of water over each other before dinner, but it's hardly a bath.

Add that to the list of things she misses.

He puts a hand on her knee. "See the trees down there? There's a stream. It marks the edge of Sulen's land. I think it's close enough -- we could get there and back before they start work again."

The last thing she wants is a hike in the noonday sun instead of a nap. But ... stream.

"Let's see."

#

It isn't far. Maybe half a mile. And it isn't deep, maybe eighteen inches at the middle. She doesn't care. She pulls off her boots and her skirt and her headscarf (sopping), sluices her handkerchiefs in the water to clean them (they're foul), pries her undershift loose from her skin and spreads it on the grass (maybe it will dry; she doubts it) and wades in; Daniel is doing much the same. She sits down in the middle of the stream, and then lies back, rubbing at her scalp. After a moment she takes a deep breath and rolls over, holding her breath as long as she can. The water is cool. Soothing. When her lungs start to burn she rolls back over and kneels up, gasping for air. She rakes her hair out of her face and rubs her eyes. She feels cool now, and a little cleaner.

Daniel has obviously ducked his head -- his hair is plastered to his scalp, rivulets of water streaming down his face -- but he's just crouching in the streambed, cupping water up over his shoulders and chest. "It's too bad it isn't deep enough to swim," he says when he sees her surface.

"It's better than nothing," she says.

"You're bruised," he says, and for a moment she doesn't know what he's talking about, then she reaches back over her rump and finds one of the sore spots. She's been able to feel them every time she bent down today; he wasn't gentle last night.

"I don't mind," she says. The water is both shallow and clear. He can see all of her. "Would you do it again?" she asks, forcing herself to ask the question out loud. "Ever?" Because it's better than nothing, better than _nothingness_ , and if it's yet another thing that she can't have, she wants to know now.

He laughs. It's a reflexive sound; startlement; and it doesn't sound entirely human. "I want..." he says. His voice is a sigh. Emotional exhaustion. Anticipation of pain. Neither of them knows what they want any more.

She moves toward him, walking on her knees across the river bottom, a layer of soft muck over clay. When she's as close to him as she can get without pushing him over -- thighs to knees -- she tilts her head back, looking up at him. Offering herself silently. _Will you kiss me?_

She wants an answer.

His hands have dropped to his thighs. Now he reaches out, gently touching her hip -- his hands are cold from the water -- then moves both hands up to rest them on her waist. He flexes his fingers; no hint of pressure, information only. _I'd like you to come to me._ She leans up. He opens his mouth into the kiss.

_Yes._

She fits herself between his knees and moves close.

Kissing is still new.

It gives her pleasure -- and that's such a passive, bloodless, _genteel_ phrase, but it's accurate. The act of kissing -- giving, receiving -- both pleases her emotionally and arouses her physically. And both are, well, new information, because it's news to her that she has any emotions left other than grief and fear and panic -- assuming that panic, is, technically, an emotion -- and she's been trying not to _be_ for so long that her body has been mostly an inconvenience, with its continuous demands for food and warmth and freedom from pain. And last night changed things, and because it did she has to know whether she's going to get the new thing _(old thing)_ she needs. Because if she isn't, she thinks she might not survive, and for some reason surviving matters. The way Daniel's kissing her -- _that_ he's kissing her -- is an indication that she will, but Dani wants something more definitive -- she has to push, always did -- so she runs her hands over his skin -- finding space, finding access -- moves one hand around to the middle of his back -- for balance -- and slides the other one between them. Reaches down and finds his cock. He's already half-hard.

She closes her hand around him and squeezes gently. At her touch he comes erect quickly: hard, straining, grunting a little with surprise and pulling his mouth away from hers.

She strokes him carefully. She's familiar with the mechanics of male masturbation, of course, and she's seen the process, but it's something she's rarely done, and the angle is awkward; the two of them face-to-face, him squatting, her kneeling. If she'd been completely certain of her welcome she'd have suggested a change of venue; as it is, this is all she can offer. If she tries to go down on him here, she'll drown.

After a moment Daniel puts his hand over hers, and they find the rhythm and the pressure together, holding onto each other with their free hands, braced against the stream. She kisses the edge of his mouth, his shoulder, tasting skin and streamwater and the faint ghost of salt, feeling the sun beat into her shoulders, the tightening tingle of drying skin. And in one way this is all backwards -- because shouldn't she be the one trying to get an orgasm here? -- but in another, the act possesses its own intuitive logic. If he will let her touch him, make him come, somehow everything else will be all right.

His fingers tense on her shoulder as he climaxes, and she feels semen ooze down over the back of her hand for just a moment. Then he sits back heavily into the water with a dull splash, pulling their clasped hands under the surface and gasping slightly at the shock of cold on sensitized flesh.

"Tidier this way," he says a few seconds later, and there's approval and -- maybe -- amusement in his voice. He releases her hand and she washes it clean, thinking that she still doesn't know what he tastes like, thinking that she wants to know. But she knows the important thing now.

"Daniel, I'm not letting you fuck me at the bottom of a river so you can make the Good Housekeeping Ten Best List."

He blinks up at her, looking absolutely startled, and Dani stares back, appalled. She shouldn't have said 'fuck'; that's got to be it. Doesn't he swear? She's never heard him do it. Jack hated swearing (odd in a military man) and hated it even more from her; when she'd found it irresistible she'd stayed out of English, but she'd always forgotten how many languages he knew at least a few words in. Usually _those_ words.

But after a moment Daniel smiles. It's the first time she's seen him do it. "Not at the bottom of a river, then."

She smiles back, relieved, and the expression feels strange on her face. "Okay. Good."

"And unfortunately I think lunch break is pretty much over."

She pushes off from the streambed and gets to her feet, reaching out a hand to help him up. When he's standing, he puts his arms around her, holding her for just a moment. Disturbing. Nice.

And tonight they'll be sweaty again and exhausted and half-drunk on beer and hard cider and _still here_ , but they'll also be naked in the hayloft together, and for the first time there's actually something to look forward to.

She turns away and wades back to shore.

#

"I like men," Daniel says.

Dani's in the middle of mounting him, swinging her leg across his hips. She straddles him anyway, but when she sinks down, she sits on his cock in a different fashion than she originally intended, pressing it down against his stomach.

They're outside. Warm twilight in front of the Stargate. They have a blanket to spread on the sand, and while there's oxygen in the air, this world hasn't even gotten as far as giant ferns. No people. No insects. Primordial in every sense of the word. A perfect place to dally for a day, until the food and water they've brought with them runs out.

"Ah, 'too,'" he clarifies, since -- after all -- they're just about to have sex, assuming that you define 'sex' -- as so many cultures do -- specifically as the act of penetration.

She leans forward, peering down into his face. Men and women. Men _as well as_ women. Her counterpart is telling her he's bisexual.

She'd say it was an outrageous time to bring this up -- worst possible -- except that it's just the way she'd always used to like to introduce topics that nobody wanted to hear about -- though not a topic like this. This isn't something she's discussed this with any of her counterparts before, even the two Alternate Danis she met. Professional history, yes. Personal history, parts of it. Not sexual orientation.

"Is that a problem?" Daniel asks.

"Be careful," Dani says, shaking her head fractionally -- _no, it's not a problem_ \-- because even if they're never going to see Earth and its religious-driven collection of sexual taboos ever again, that doesn't mean those proscriptions are unique. Every culture has rules. Jaffa taboos were extensive: Teal'c was enormously forgiving of all his new _Tau'ri_ companions every time they managed to bump into one he thought he'd left behind.

"I won't need to be," he says, stroking her leg. "I'm not planning to have sex with anyone else." _'Ever'_ is implied.

"Oh," she says, feeling oddly breathless. She pushes down and forward, managing to slip a little on him; there's been a lot of foreplay before they got to this point. Foreplay always used to irritate her, but now she finds it soothing; touching and being touched. She does it again, rocking back and forth, wetting him further and settling to a comforting rhythm. If she accidentally gets him off, she has no worries she'll go unsatisfied.

"Not you?" he asks.

Dani shakes her head. _Yes and no._ "No bang."

She'd certainly experimented -- undergrad, teenager, trying out the whole idea of sex, and men hadn't seemed to be working out. Her female partners had at least been nicer to her, telling her exactly what to do -- she'd made no secret of her inexperience -- but they'd wanted more from her than orgasms and indifference, and at seventeen and eighteen that was all she had to give. Men were simpler. But there was no bang with men, either. Not most of the time. Not like what Daniel gives her. _Because I'm a monster_ , she thinks, because what she's doing when she fucks Daniel is having sex with herself, and it's good, it's the best of her life -- better than Roger, better than Simon, better than drugged-up sarcophagus sex with Shy'lac. And the reason it's so good -- love among the ruins -- is obviously because it's so _wrong._

"So you're straight?" Daniel asks, and oh god, he should have a clue; she's humping him like a dog right now and they've been fucking like bunnies every chance they get for the last twenty days. It's better than drugs. All she really wants out of the rest of her life is to never see the Furlings again and to have some safe place to fuck Daniel's brains out until she dies. It's not much, but she's learned to live with diminished expectations.

"I guess. I don't know. I don't care," she says.

"Up," he says, curling his fingers around the backs of her thighs and pulling, and she leans forward, catching her weight on her hands for a moment before he urges her back again, guiding himself into her. She settles back, stretched and filled, and rocks back and forth. The ancient priesthoods of the Near East prayed to various aspects of the Goddess by simulating coitus in a squatting position; the ritual survives (in denatured form) in contemporary Judaism as _davening._ She wonders if there are Jews anywhere in this galaxy. If there is an Earth at all, and what its history is.

"M'm," he says, and his voice has the faint undercurrent of distraction that she's come to associate with his arousal pleasure. "Straight. I'd say straight. Mostly straight. At least half straight."

"Why now?" she asks. _Why tell me now? It's not as if there would ever have been any reason for me to know._

"I wanted to tell you," he says. "I wanted you to know."

Trust. Trusting her. And oh god, it isn't as if they don't both have issues there: Dani can number the people she's trusted absolutely, unconditionally, in the course of her life on her fingers and have fingers left over, and most of them have betrayed her in one way or another. Her parents. Nick. Simon. Teal'c and Sammy and Jack. Probably, almost certainly, no, _absolutely_ , Daniel's history runs just the same. And suddenly she wonders what sort of a difference it -- this left-turn in his sexual map -- has made in his life. Married to Sha're, on SG-1, and she can't really see him having engaged in clandestine assignations with SG-5 down at the Motor Pool. Of course, neither did she. She wants to offer up a comparable secret -- or at least a comparable truth -- but she isn't sure she has any.

"I'll tell you everything," she says, and for the first time in her life, she means it.

"Tell me about -- _ah!_ \-- tell me about your first time," he says, gasping as she bears down, riding him gloriously. His eyes are closed and he sounds breathless; she's moving faster on him now. They're out of synch tonight, she's pretty sure he'll finish first. She wants to ride the wave of having him in her; it's more erotic by far than the memory she's about to summon up for him.

"UCLA. Seventeen. Some guy."

"Some guy?" Daniel's eyes open; she isn't sure what part of what she's told him so far surprises him.

"Sophomore. He was, um ... older than I was? Everyone was. Don't remember his name. There was ... m'm ... some kind of a party. And I asked him to have sex with me."

"Oh, god. Were you drunk?" Daniel sounds amused and disbelieving -- and on his way to climax.

"I'd had a couple of beers. He was alone. He was good-looking. He wasn't in any of my classes -- all pluses. He agreed, so we went back to my room. I was on the Pill -- I'd gotten a prescription when I decided I was going to try sex -- and nobody worried about disease back then, you remember?"

"Eighty-one," Daniel says, arching up into her. "You did if you were smart."

AIDS. He's just young enough -- if he was lucky, and smart, and careful -- to have been safe.

"I was always more lucky than smart. I _did_ check him for visible sores, rashes, and suspicious discharges, though."

"Oh! Good. Good."

"That was after I got him naked, of course. He'd brought a bottle from the party -- vodka, I think. We did a couple of shots, and kissed for a while, and then we took off our clothes."

She sighs a little, concentrating on the luxurious slide of Daniel's body in and out of hers, the delicious building tension with the guaranteed payoff. Every time she slides down, there's a sharp spark of pleasure; as she eases off him, the tug and suction tickle her deep inside. She raises her hands to her breasts, pressing them into her ribcage and stroking the nipples. Everything is so sensitive when she's on her way to orgasm. It's very nice.

And just as nice -- maybe nicer, because it's something almost new in her life -- is knowing she can get Daniel off. Learning all the ways to do it. She likes making him, letting him, helping him come. Likes bringing him off, likes the lazy peace that follows when they've both come. Even if it's brief -- only an hour or two at most -- it's more than either of them have had in a long time.

"Don't stop now," he says.

"You're still listening?" She can tell from the sound of his voice that he's close to climax. She could get him to come right now -- his nipples are as sensitive as hers, and they're _right there_ \-- but she won't. She'll finish the story. "Okay. We're naked. I didn't tell him I was a virgin, of course, because I didn't want to scare him off."

"Oh, god," Daniel groans.

She's not sure what it's a comment on: their sexual present, or her sexual past. Either would be appropriate. "He put his fingers in me, and I could tell he thought that was supposed to be a big deal, but you know, there really aren't a lot of nerve endings in the vaginal sheath, just pressure receptors. It didn't hurt, though, so I went along with it, because he had experience and I wanted to find out what the experience was like. The whole experience." She makes an amused sound. " _He_ certainly seemed to be getting something out of it. And having completed the ritual foreplay, we proceeded to intromission." She can't remember his name, or really what he looked like, but she still remembers -- symbolically, at a distance -- the alarming unnatural _discomfort_ of the act. If she hadn't done extensive reading beforehand, she would have been frightened. "Of course I was tight, but I was wet, and we were both determined he was going to get it in there, though for completely different reasons. He finally did, and he told me I was wonderful, and I was good, and he finished, and he remembered a pressing appointment, and he left. It hurt, and it was messier than I expected, and I couldn't imagine coming from doing something like that." Not like now. If there's one thing she could give her younger self -- bearing in mind the terrible toxic lessons the Furlings have taught her about doomed foreknowledge and the disaster it brings -- it's the absolute certain knowledge of the pleasures of coitus, though the pleasure has been far from certain until now. The satisfaction in it has often been, as it was at the very first, in the defiance. But there's nothing left to defy. Her only remaining enemy is as disinterested as the archangels of Christian theology, and no one else cares at all. So all that leaves is the act itself, _for_ the act itself. For the first time in her life, there's no other reason to have sex, just as there's no other reason to do anything, and absolute freedom, like any other absolute, is not something humans were meant to have.

"Stop ... thinking..." Daniel gasps, but she can't. Her mind is gaining ascendancy, forcing her to focus on it instead of on her body; she feels the outside world -- here and now and Daniel -- slip away, an unexpected surgery, as she's locked back into the philosophical prison of her intellect. It's a place she's spent most of her life, usually an eager captive, and it isn't prison if you're willing, but the pleasure of a moment before is fading, distant, forced down below the hum of ideas, sending her to a place where the body is a tool, sometimes an obstacle. But she doesn't need company there, and so she leans forward, bending down until she can swipe the flat of her tongue across his nipples -- first one, then the other -- long lascivious strokes, and when they're wet and slippery she rubs her thumbs across them, pushing into the muscle of his chest with the heels of her hands. He comes then, rising up, lifting her, head thrown back, sharp cry of surprise and short gasping grunts -- Daniel, bisexual Daniel, other-her Daniel. She feels the slippery squelch between her thighs as he falls back, panting. She settles into place again, rocking just a little, gently now. She'll move in a moment. She strokes his stomach, feeling the muscles quiver beneath her hand, but her mind is elsewhere. Perfect freedom. They could go anywhere, do anything. Commit murder, probably, and escape through the Stargate, if killing another living being held even the slightest fascination for either of them. She'd like to find some place a little more advanced, though -- if she were wishing for things. A place with cities large enough for them to disappear into. With indoor plumbing and hot water. Something approaching modern medicine. Where she could wear pants again. She realizes (listening to her own thoughts) that she's thinking about making a life, a future. And she knows that while she can think about it -- she's always been good at self-destructive things -- it's nothing she can _do_. She can get through a day, or two, or three, manage the simple interactions with the farms and villages they come to (the technology is primitive; the cultures are not; it's only doable because they can leave if they make too many mistakes), but she isn't capable of more.

After a little longer Daniel slips out of her and she pushes off automatically, thinking of dismounting -- horses, vaulting horse, gymnastics -- and before she can stop herself the memory wells up like blood from a poisoned wound: watching the Olympics at Jack's house on a summer afternoon, all of them together -- her and Sammy and Teal'c and Jack -- her explanation to Teal'c of the ancestry of the Games ruthlessly edited and dismissed and flatly contradicted by Jack until she really wondered why Teal'c didn't hit _both_ of them.

_Dead. They're all dead._

"That was awful," Daniel says disbelievingly.

Dani blinks at him, jarred, trying to remember what conversation she's supposed to be following. Sometimes -- often -- he knows exactly what she's thinking. She's learning to count on that, to believe he always will, but it's a double-edged sword. Though this metaphorical sword has more than two edges, really, because there are times that she doesn't want him to know what she's thinking -- and he still does -- and times that she knows what he's thinking, and she doesn't want to know that, either.

She kneels beside him, looking down at him, puzzled.

"The sex?" Daniel prompts, reaching out to take her hand. "Your first time?"

"Oh," she says, finding the thread of the discourse. "Well, men are like that," she says, before remembering -- a conversational beat too late -- that she isn't talking to Sammy, or to Janet, or even to another Dani, but to _Daniel._

"Thanks," he says ruefully. "Yes, I know. Sometimes. Not always."

Not always, but statistically: cultural imperatives, gender bias, nature and nurture and _for God's sake Dr. Jackson don't you ever stop talking O'Neill said you were nothing but a damned pain in the ass and he was right about that--_

"You're not," she says, interrupting her inside-self. _Not like that,_ she means, not that Daniel isn't a man. Though probably some people said that to him as well. She sighs and strokes his hand, thinking of the effect that gender roles and cultural expectation have on the formation of personality.

"I'm _sensitive_ ," Daniel says, his mouth twisting -- not a smile -- and there's a faint note of bitterness in his voice.

"Are you?" she asks blankly.

And he smiles -- a real smile this time. "You should know."

She doesn't want to vanish into her own mind tonight. She flounders, looking for a way out. "Don't you want to hear about the rest of my sex life?"

"I'm surprised you kept it up after that," he teases, his tone dry as bones.

She lies down beside him, on her back, staring up at the sky. It's pale green. A few stars are already visible. "I was the talk of Colorado Springs. Not really. But I, um, sort of, dated." Anonymous carefully-crafted one-night-stands in singles' bars, counter-irritant to an irritant she dared not name.

"What did you tell them?" _'Who did you tell them you were?'_

"Schoolteacher."

She isn't really comfortable right now. She'd meant and intended and expected to get off, and her body still expects that -- she can feel it fretting and yammering at her off in the distance. But she feels locked into her head, unable to get out. On the edge of too twitchy to be touched; certainly, perversely, she lacks the patience, the willingness, to touch herself.

"Usually I went to Denver. Not often," Daniel says. _'I didn't go often.'_

She wonders who he solicited (yes, that would have been the word, for him as well as for her) in Denver. Men? Women? -- and why. No, she doesn't have to wonder. She knows. And she won't say so, because of the other thing she knows as well.

_'Jack and Sam ... there was this spark between them from the moment she joined SG-1. They both knew it. And there wasn't a damned thing they could do about it.'_

True in Daniel's universe. Not in hers.

He rolls over, across her, but not on top of her. He slides down, until his chin is resting just below her navel; pushing her legs apart so he's lying between them. She raises up on her elbows to look at him, frowning slightly. She's not sure what she wants right now.

"I'll tell you about my first," he says, raising his head slightly. "It was better than yours. I even remember his name."

She settles back on her elbows, relaxing since apparently all he's going to do is talk. "'His?'"

"Oh, yes." Daniel smiles again. "Ethan. Freshman. Classics major. I thought I might be gay. I wasn't sure. It took me another ten years to realize I was never going to _be_ sure and another five after that to decide it really didn't matter. It doesn't matter who you love, as long as they love you back." He kisses her -- below the navel, above the scar that Janet left. She decides to permit that without comment.

"Opens up your dating options," she suggests.

"M'm. Most places. Not on a military base. I didn't realize Ethan was hitting on me at first. He made no secret of the fact he was gay -- I knew _that_ \-- it was the idea, I guess, of somebody wanting me that wasn't getting through. I knew what I wanted -- what I thought I _probably_ wanted, anyway. It was getting from theory to practice that was the problem."

He slides the back of his hand up the inside of her thigh, firmly enough not to tickle, and presses into the muscles halfway up, rubbing absently as he speaks. She thinks about the puzzle he's set: freshman year at UCLA. Their pasts match: she already knows that. Who did she know named Ethan who was openly gay? Classics major...

"Oh my god," she says in disbelief, dropping her head back, "you had sex with _Ethan McMillan_? We were in the same study group."

"Yes," Daniel says, sounding pleased that she's guessed. He nuzzles the skin below her navel again. "You were. I was. And after two months where I was -- apparently -- playing hard to get, he walked me home from the library one night and propositioned me in Classical Greek."

"And you said 'yes,'" Dani guesses.

Daniel clears his throat a little self-consciously. "Actually, I corrected his pronunciation. You would have."

"I did. Constantly. He hated me."

"He _kissed_ me." Daniel pushes himself backward on the blanket a few inches and lowers his head to the damp sticky curls between her legs, pressing his mouth to the hard point of bone at the top of her pubis. She feels his tongue swipe over her, and the twinge makes her clench inside, teetering between irritation and anticipation. "I liked it," he continues, raising his head, as if there's been no interruption. "So _then_ I said 'yes.'"

"And there was sex," she says, matching his dispassionate inflection. She's not quite sure what he's _doing_ , but the story is interesting enough to keep her in place.

"First he took me up to his room and threw his roommate out. Then he kissed me again and he touched me and I came in my pants," Daniel explains.

She'd laugh, but he's lowered his head again and now he's lapping at her, long slow wet sloppy strokes, as if he's in no particular hurry to get his tongue into her and is just tidying up. He's gone down on her before, of course, but never just after he's come inside her. There's no way he isn't tasting himself on her, in her. The thought makes her groan. Conceptual sex. An idea more erotic than any act. Warmth spikes up through her breastbone. She draws a deep breath and decides not to move.

"So then he got my pants off and asked me if I thought I could go again," Daniel resumes, and it's like listening to an X-rated mission briefing. "I said I didn't know. He said we should try, as if it was some sort of, oh, important experiment in the name of Science. I was sitting on the edge of his bed, and by now both of us were naked, and he knelt down in front of me..."

Her interior monologue has been replaced by pictures. It's like having her own pornographic movie. She knows exactly what the dorm rooms look like -- would have looked like, then. Knows the faint nose-tickling scent of dust and laundry soap and old wax and whatever designed-to-kill-them-all concoction Housekeeping used on the floors. The dorm room windows opened, and you could smell the eucalyptus trees on the campus, and the lemon scent of the camellia bushes planted around the Freshman dorms (at least when she'd taken enough antihistamines, and the air quality wasn't too bad), and you could always hear two or three competing stereo systems: an eternal battle of the bands. She remembers Ethan McMillan -- blond and rangy and arrogant, and the two of them'd had no patience with each other. He'd never been in her league academically -- though he'd had unfounded pretensions -- but he'd certainly been beautiful. She imagines him now, on his knees to Daniel. She doesn't need to imagine the sounds Daniel would have made, because she's evoked them herself. She conjures up (now) the pleading catch in his voice, the gasps, the way his hips would thrust forward and how he would strain against the hands holding him down.

And this time Daniel thrusts his tongue inside her, licking at the walls of her cunt -- tasting his own come, sucking it out of her, and in her mind Ethan is on his knees in front of Daniel, breathing in his scent, licking the cock in front of him to erection once more, sucking it in. She takes another deep breath as Daniel's mouth moves back up to her clit again, and now she feels no uncertainty. She wants him to lick her and suck her and slide his fingers into her and frig her until she comes. That's what she wants. Both now and then, as if she could remake the past, insert herself into her Other Self's history and participate in his deflowering.

She's starting to approach the point where she needs something to push up against. Her chin is on her chest, but she isn't really watching him any more. She just wants him to keep going, to take her over the edge. But he stops. Again.

"I got hard again almost immediately -- I was sixteen, remember--"

"Oh-god-could-we-finish-this- _later_?"

"Which part?" he asks, looking up at her. But he smiles -- lazy, triumphant -- and spreads one hand over her hip, and slips his fingers into her, and lowers his head again.

#

"I want the rest of the story," she says later, when they're rolled up together in the blanket, propped against the steps of the Stargate. Three moons are doing really alarming things in the sky -- moving fast, and they look as if they're about to bang into each other, but they don't. They're large enough that this world probably has to worry about serious tides and serious earthquakes, too. The two of them won't be here long enough to worry about either. But it's nice to rest for a couple of hours. They already have their next destination in mind.

"Good sex," Daniel says. "Okay, _great_ sex, not that I had anything to compare it to. Later that night I gave my very first blow-job. I was pretty bad at it."

"It takes practice," she agrees gravely, and while this conversation really doesn't even make her Top Ten Weird List, it might be a runner-up for the Top Fifty.

"I got in a lot pretty soon. But, you know, even back then ... I'd still rather study than have sex."

She thinks about it, trying to transplant sex this good onto her sixteen (or seventeen) -year-old self. Tries to remember how she'd been then, still with so much to learn, still believing in the _possibility_. "I would have, too," she says. She shakes her head. _I bet that didn't go over well with Ethan._ She doesn't say the words, but Daniel hears them anyway.

"It didn't," Daniel says. "It never did."

Not with any of them. The lovers they had, and the lovers they didn't have. She leans her head against Daniel's shoulder, half-asleep, imagining a perfect fantasy world in which they could have met, and known, and loved each other long, long, ago.

#

The two of them keep moving, world to world to world. If one defines a month arbitrarily as a thirty-day period, it's been four months since she and Daniel met at the Quantum Mirror on some P3R-233 somewhere. Long enough to think that the gamble has worked: that the Ori and the Furlings won't risk the chance of encountering each other by following them. Long enough to know that -- in another sense -- it's failed. Outsiders, strangers everywhere they go, she and Daniel lack commodifiable skills. It's not that they lack useful ones; they don't. She's a fair midwife, they're both jackleg geologists (comes with the Archeology degree, and Stargate Command never really believed in narrow-focus specialization), whether they like it or not they both know more than they want to about mining. Daniel can cook, Dani can milk goats (she learned that skill in Mexico, and refined it on Abydos) and they're both quick studies. But to be allowed to offer up those skills and trade them for food and shelter and lodging for more than a few days requires ties to the community. The people they're meeting on their travels aren't as suspicious of outsiders as those in some cultures they've both encountered, but it takes time to make a place for yourself in a settlement and gain acceptance. And to do that, you need to bring more than just the clothes on your back and a history you won't tell. They never manage to fit in.

The towns would be better -- they've heard of a few, though this is the first one they've gotten an address for -- but when a culture progresses as far as developing population centers large enough to be called towns, it also progresses to a cash-based economy, and she and Daniel don't have any (Catch-22: you have to have money to live in a town so that you can earn the money to live in the town), and no way to keep themselves while they earn any. There's a festival going on in this one when they arrive -- it's called Jund -- and Daniel sets up on a street-corner as a storyteller. They collect a few coins before he's chased away. Dani thinks from the way the man (policemen all look the same, no matter how they're dressed) was shouting at them that you need a license to tell stories in Jund.

They duck into an alleyway a few streets over and count their takings. Several copper. Two brass (they seem to be a lesser denomination). One silver (someone was feeling generous). They'll go into the bazaar, hang around the money-changer's table for a while until they get an idea of what the coins are worth and what they'll buy, but it probably isn't a lot.

"Food or shelter?" Daniel asks, because that's really the choice, unless the coins are worth more than Dani thinks they probably are. They could just go back through the Stargate of course; they know addresses for a number of villages and smallholdings by now, and some of them might be willing to exchange goods for coins. But they need new clothes, cloaks, so many other things from soap to a shaving razor, and more than all of those things, they need a _place_. They won't find it in anything smaller than a town.

She shakes her head. "We'll see."

#

_'What do you have and what do you need?'_ Jack had asked her that question so many times, patiently trying to teach her to _think._ It wasn't that Dani didn't think -- she thought too much, Jack always said -- but she never thought that way. About survival. Elemental things.

She's thinking that way now. They need food, shelter, supplies. What they have is _them._

They could steal, but it isn't safe (she certainly doesn't care any more whether it's wrong or not, she hasn't cared for a long time). As drifters, outsiders, fitting into the local culture, the local economy, anywhere they go is more than difficult. The two of them wander through the festival-city as day turns to evening, searching out the poorest quarter of town. More dangerous there, but cheaper.

The streets of Jund are filled with people. At least the two of them have eaten. There's free bread and beer for anyone who's willing to claim it; it's Festival. All you have to do is walk up to a table set up in the middle of one of the squares and let a priest bless you in the name of Frajur -- an elision of Freyr, obviously, god of fruitfulness and harvests; she wonders if this is an Asgard Protected World (wonders if there are Asgard, if there are _Goa'uld_ ). But Daniel wouldn't do it, shying away from the sight of the priest as if the man were a _Goa'uld_. So Dani had taken the blessing -- meaningless, all gods are meaningless -- and split her bread with him afterward. He'd pulled her into a doorway and scrubbed the anointing oil from her forehead with his sleeve until her skin was raw, his face tight and blank. But he'd taken the bread.

Ten brass to a copper. Six copper to the small silver coin they have; they saw the larger one at the money-changer when they went to find out what their coins were worth. Five of the small silver to a large silver, or thirty copper pieces. The price of a loaf of new bread is two copper pieces in ordinary times, four during Festival. They didn't buy. They may have the price of a night's lodging -- somewhere -- but not two.

Dani watches the people around them. All of them have places to go, places they belong. Ways to _fit_. Even here, where she can see the hallmarks of poverty everywhere, and Festival is only a respite from the struggle to stay alive, they're connected to their society. She'd always thought of herself as being disconnected from her own; wandering, rootless. Now she knows what it really is to be disconnected. The two of them are going to die from not fitting in -- oh, it will be of exposure, starvation, or just of being locked up in some prison or poorhouse through insufficient paranoia, but the real reason will be because they haven't managed to _fit_.

As she watches, a woman walks up to a man nearby. There's a brief conversation, then she links her arm with his, and the two of them stroll off together. The two of them turn down an alleyway.

"The world's oldest profession," Daniel says, following her gaze.

"That's religion," she corrects absently. But they can hardly start a religion to make the universe feed them. "Find out what they charge," she says slowly.

Daniel stops, pulling her to a halt. "Dani." _You can't be serious._

She doesn't know if she is. She doesn't know if she can be. Can do this. But she's tired of pretending she isn't hungry when she is -- it's not that she'd sell herself just for a hot meal, but for what it represents? Social mobility, social flexibility, _choices--_

"The farms and villages aren't working out, Daniel. We need to try the towns. For that we need cash, a, a, a grubstake. If we stay long enough, it gives us a chance to find out what else we can do here. To find out what that license the man was talking about costs."

"No," Daniel says flatly.

"It can't be you," she says.

Daniel closes his eyes. "Why not?"

She leans into him, wanting to comfort him, wanting to win the argument. "We've seen female prostitution. And they're worshipping a variation of Freyr, so the religion is either focusing on Freyr -- Frajur -- as a Dying God, or Freyr as a Husbandman with a female consort. Neither aspect is likely to produce a culture that will allow people to pay _you_ for sex." With male or female partners.

"So unlike Christianity," Daniel says, and there's a note of contempt in his voice.

She shakes her head. She doubts Daniel wants to embrace prostitution any more than she does. "You know how far underground anything like that is going to be in a culture like this."

"I can find it," he says.

"Not tonight," she says. And she tells herself that she hasn't made up her mind, that she's just gathering information, doing mission prep, but oh, god, they've _run out of options,_ they ran out of options days ago and they both know it. "Find out what they charge," she says again. "Or I will."

He continues to refuse, even after they walk on, and find an inn -- dark and shabby and poor, as far down the social scale as they're willing to risk -- and the innkeeper tells them that the price of a night's lodging for both of them will be six copper coins (Festival prices). That's not for a room -- those are all unavailable -- but for space on the floor of the main room several hours from now, since it's only early evening. If they want to rent a blanket, it will cost them another copper.

The beer is five brass a tankard, and if they want to stay at all, they have to buy. The beer is thin, flat, warm, watered. The innkeeper is obviously making money on it, even though the wooden tankards hold almost two pints.

The inn's common room is noisy, and it's filled with people. Most of them local, but a few from elsewhere; Dani catalogues them by their dress. There are some family groups here, even children, but the prostitutes are easy to spot: single women, unaccompanied. Their heads are uncovered. So's hers, but her clothes proclaim her to be foreign; they're similar enough to what the locals are wearing not to give offense, though ideally her head should be covered too.

The prostitutes approach their potential clients openly. Some take them upstairs. Others take them outside. No money changes hands here, so Dani still has no idea what the going rate is for the sexual act.

If she does this -- and Dani still can't believe she's suggested it, is trying to make herself do it -- Daniel won't want her any more, won't touch her any more, won't fuck her any more. She thinks that must be true, and tries to steel herself against the loss of something (touch and kindness and physical if not emotional affection) that has made this walking death bearable. It won't matter (she survived before she met him; she'll survive without him fucking her). They'll be alive. Why _that_ should matter is something she doesn't want to think about, though she really can't help it. It matters because Jack would expect it of her. Because Jack made her live when Anubis was coming for her at the end (the first end). And now that -- so it seems -- she's found a way to escape the Furling trap, she feels she owes Jack her continued existence no matter what she has to do to secure it, and if she owes Jack her life (her ongoing aliveness), she must owe him Daniel's, too, because in so many places it's been Jack-and-Daniel, just as it was Jack-and-her.

It would be easier for her if Daniel would find out what the women are charging -- so that at least she doesn't sell herself short -- but she doesn't think he will. Maybe he can't, any more than he could put himself under the hands of the priest. She pushes herself away from the wall (all the tables are full; the common room is standing room only).

"Where are you going?" he asks. There's neither anger nor suspicion in his voice, only sadness. He knows the answer to his question already.

"To find out what they charge," she answers quietly.

"No," he says wearily. "I'll do it." He walks away.

She expects him simply to get the information and come back and tell her, but instead he comes back with one of the prostitutes. Like most of the Junders Dani's seen, she's tall, strapping, blonde-haired, brown-eyed. She regards Dani suspiciously.

"You want to go to the wall?" the woman asks.

It must be local slang, but Dani doesn't dare risk a misunderstanding. "I want men to pay me to have sex," she says carefully. "I don't want any trouble."

The woman studies her. "You haven't done this before."

"I've sold myself before," Dani says. "Not like this." She's spent her whole life selling herself, making bargains and promises. And if none of them were ever kept, still, the intent was there.

"Who's he?" The woman jerks her head at Daniel now.

"He's my man." The safest and most neutral word out of any she could use. _Husband, brother, lover_ ... all true. All false.

"Huh. Come on, then. I'm Reece. What do we call you?"

"Dani." (She knew a Reece once, from mission files in First Daniel's world. She was the mother of all the Replicators. There are a limited number of sounds in human language; a limited number of combinations. It is coincidence, nothing more).

Reece puts an arm around her shoulders and walks her over to the innkeeper. "Haymon. Country girl come to the city to go to the wall. Danee."

It's all so fast and public. She ought to feel ashamed, but what Dani mostly feels is numb. Haymon looks her up and down as if she's an annoyance.

"You're not that young. And you're skinny. But blue eyes, that's good. Are you a virgin?"

She looks up at Reece, faintly alarmed. "I, um, I wasn't planning to work in a, um, brothel, Reece. I just wanted to know..."

Reece laughs, squeezing her arm. "You don't want to go out on the street! A copper a go in an alley? You can charge two if you have a room, three if you let them have you naked. Hoo, Haymon, she's no virgin! Got a lazy motherless man who won't work."

Oh, god, she wishes Daniel hadn't heard that, and knows he did.

"Naked isn't a problem," she says. She looks at Haymon. "How much for a room? Do you have one? And can Daniel and I sleep there afterward?"

"I'll show you," Haymon says.

The room is tiny, at the end of the hall. There's a small bed -- wood frame, straw mattress, blanket -- and a table with a basin and ewer. Light comes from a clay lamp hanging from the ceiling; it burns some kind of oil, and it smells.

The price of the room is six copper coins, plus sex; he says he'll wait for the coins. Haymon wants her naked, and Dani strips quickly. She isn’t ready, and it hurts, but at least it's over fast. Afterward she washes and dresses again, unable to believe, really, in what's just happened.

She's a whore now.

#

She isn't very good at approaching men, but she's new and that's a novelty. As is, apparently, the fact she's willing to take off all her clothes. Word gets around; Dani doesn't even have to leave the inn. She doesn't want to think about how many times she's gone up the stairs with someone, but all she needs to do to remember is to count the coins she's tied into a fold of her shift.

She hates herself.

She's sore and she feels filthy.

But she's had a few shots of whatever passes for distilled spirits here -- Haymon pours for her when she comes down, as if it's an expected thing; he tells her that usually it's two brass a shot, but tonight -- for her -- it's free -- and her head is floating just a little. Her latest client -- oh, god, she has clients now -- has just left, and she's washed again -- though what she really wants is a long hot shower with the harshest soap she can find -- and dressed again, and is sitting on the edge of the bed, barefoot, thinking she needs to put on her boots and go back downstairs again, when there's a knock on the door.

Is Haymon sending them up to her now?

"Go away," she whispers, not loud enough for anyone to hear.

The door opens and Daniel comes in. He's carrying a tray. "You're done for the night," he says. There's no emotion in his voice.

He sets the tray down on the bed. Two bowls. Some kind of greasy stew thickened with grain, and there's a lot of it. Chunks of bread, thickly spread with butter; there's oil beading on the surface of the butter, indicating it's on the edge of turning. Two steaming mugs. She catches the raw scent of whatever she's been drinking.

"Dinner," he says. "Eat."

She picks up the bowl -- her hands are shaking slightly -- and the spoon -- carved horn -- that goes with it. The stew isn't bad, even though there's more grain and vegetable to it than meat. It's hot, and it's better than not eating.

Daniel sits down beside her -- on the other side of the tray -- and picks up his own bowl.

This is what it's all for. A roof, a door, a bed, and a meal, for both of them. Stargate Command's finest. Dr. Danielle Jackson, SG-1, a two-copper whore on a planet she doesn't even know the name of. Oh, no, that's hardly fair. She's a _three_ -copper whore, and some of her clients tonight even gave her four.

"Slow down," Daniel says. "You'll make yourself sick."

She reaches for the mug. "What is this?"

He shrugs. "They called it 'tea.' Haymon put a shot of -- something -- in both of them. He said it was on the house."

"Nice of him."

"He's a nice man," Daniel says tonelessly.

Dani doesn't know what to say. That Haymon _was_ nice? He didn't have to give her -- rent her -- a room and help her find clients. That Reece was nice? Every man Dani took upstairs was one that Reece -- or one of the other whores working here tonight -- didn't get to claim, and this is a subsistence-level economy. Two coppers is the price of a loaf of bread (except during Festival). A loaf of bread is a day's food. She picks up the mug and drinks. It (still) tastes awful, but she can feel the burn of the raw spirits at the back of her throat. She's almost drunk. She'd like to be drunk. She drains the mug and reaches for her spoon again.

"Are you all right?" Daniel asks quietly.

"I am. I guess so. I will be," she says, her voice as flat as his. "Festival runs three more days."

Three more days -- at least -- of doing this. Before the city goes back to normal, before they see what else they can do here. Before they start spending the money she'll have bought so dearly. She doesn't even want to ask how much dinner cost. Doesn't want to measure it against the time spent on her back in this room.

"There's a bathhouse a few streets from here. Reece told me. It doesn't cost much. We can go in the morning."

She nods, still staring down at the bowl in her hands. She empties it mechanically, using the heel of the bread to wipe up every drop of gravy. When she's done, she sets the bowl back on the tray, beside the mug.

"Dani." Daniel cups her face in his hand and turns her to face him. "This doesn't change anything. Maybe you're braver than I am."

Or more of a coward. She isn't sure whether it's braver to survive on any terms or to refuse to bend at all. But she nods anyway. She takes a deep breath. "We can start making a preliminary list of what we want to buy tomorrow, and try to find out costs. Drink your tea."

He leans forward and kisses her gently at the corner of her mouth. "The tea is awful," he says confidentially.

"It really is," she says. "Drink it fast."

He smiles faintly, as if she's said something else -- everything they say to each other means two things, or three -- and drains his mug, gasping and choking afterward. "Oh, god," he says. "That's worse than Skaara's moonshine."

She nods solemnly. He gets to his feet. "I'll take this back to the kitchen," he says, picking up the tray. "Get into bed. You really are done."

"Leave your bag."

He slips it off his shoulder, juggling the tray, and while he's gone she un-knots the fabric of her shift and spills out coins onto the bed. She doesn't count them, though there are a lot, even after she's already paid Haymon. She scoops them into Daniel's bag and takes off her dress again, folding back the blanket and climbing beneath it, still in her shift. She presses herself against the wall -- leaving room for him -- and closes her eyes.

A few minutes later he's back. The bed shifts and creaks as he sits down on it to remove his boots. She listens to him undress -- familiar sounds -- then he blows out the lamp and slides in beside her, fitting against her, front to back.

"Cozy," he says into her ear.

The bed is tiny, but the door has a latch. This is what it was all for. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her firmly against him, and sighs into her hair. Resignation. Acceptance. Sorrow. She reaches up and puts her hand over his.

They'll survive.

#

They stay in Jund another twenty-two days. The cost of a begging license -- which will let Daniel tell stories in the street -- is four large silver -- 120 copper pieces. It takes Dani ten days to earn the money; there's the cost of food and lodging on top of it. The bathhouse. The numbing salve Reece teaches her to use, that she can't use until after she's finished for the night, because it's a _numbing_ salve.

With the license, Daniel's earnings are far from certain, but he can work the richer quarters of the city, where the passers-by toss silver as often as copper.

By the time he has his first day's earnings, they've found a cheap lodging house near Haymon's inn. It's two coppers a day, not six, and the room is much worse -- dirtier (and cleaning supplies cost money) and cold all the time; the door doesn't latch, and the landlady steals anything that isn't nailed down -- but Dani doesn't have to whore for it. They're satisfied. And they can afford it. They're hardly wealthy, but they're eating regularly.

Ten days after Dani leaves Haymon's, she and Daniel have sex again. It's close to being a disaster. Both of them are nervous and tense. She's desperate to prove that she still _can_ , he wants to prove that he still wants her. She knows that Daniel doesn't hate her for what she's done, but he isn't that fond of thinking about what she did with her former clients, and she knows he can't help seeing himself as them anymore than she could keep from seeing herself as Hathor for all those years. The connection between the two fills her mind as they fumble against each other beneath the thin filthy blanket, and when she accidentally calls him 'Beloved,' there's a horrible moment -- she thinks she's ruined everything, forever -- then he laughs so hard he falls out of the bed.

"Did you call them that?" Daniel demands incredulously, sitting up and looking at her.

"All of them," she says helplessly. " _Meryt._ Beloved. Every single one."

"Don't call me that, okay?" he says.

"Never," she promises.

He climbs back up into the bed, and it isn't a disaster after all, though it's far from being a wild success. She can't come -- she's miles away from coming. It doesn't matter to her. She just wants him inside her, holding her, moving in her and wanting her. She's wet enough, and it's pleasurable, but it's really more soothing than erotic.

"Are you all right?" he whispers.

She strokes his back. "Yes. I'm good. I can't come tonight. It's all right. Can you? I want you to." She kisses his ear. She'd tell him that she loves him -- because right now she does -- but it wouldn't be right.

"Yes. All right. Give me a minute. Can you turn over?"

He pulls out of her and she turns over onto her stomach. Back to front; more compression for him, and quicker. He slips back into her carefully, settles himself against her. She likes the warmth and the pressure; the _idea_ of him. And liking the idea, the reality will come. She's certain of it.

A few days later, it does.

And it would be nice to stay somewhere, but neither of them wants to stay here. The two of them are just getting by, and it isn't likely that they'll be able to move up the economic ladder; every occupation in Jund ( _every_ occupation in Jund) requires a license, and they all cost money. The cost of a license to whore is measured in gold. Dani didn't have one, so what she was doing at Haymon's was highly illegal. Most prostitution in Jund is illegal (i.e. unlicensed), and -- as with all economic conventions -- there's a good reason for that, too. Another name for whores here is 'Frajur's brides.' Conviction for unlicensed prostitution -- whether it's true or not -- is used to funnel surplus women into the nunnery/workhouses run by the priesthood (Jund is a religious state, of course; separation of Church and State is a very late social invention) where their labor -- and possibly their bodies as well, if the Church of Frajur runs brothels -- can be used for the good of the state. Unlicensed prostitution is also punished by branding -- first conviction on the back, second on the cheek (the workhouse is a life-sentence, but of course many try to escape and some succeed). It's another reason that Dani's nakedness was such an attraction; it was proof to her clients that she'd never been arrested by the Church.

All of that is draconian enough, but worst of all, Dani could be arrested at any point in the rest of her life for past crimes (no statute of limitations in Jund), and proving her innocence would be nearly impossible, even if she _were_ innocent (for one thing, the justice system here permits both sides to pay witnesses to appear, something the Church can afford to do and they can't). Daniel thinks that Haymon is simply waiting until the two of them are prosperous enough to blackmail. It's possible. And, when you come right down to it, in Jund, Daniel's a beggar and she's a retired whore. They need to find something better. Some _where_ better. So they move on.

It's been one hundred forty days now.

#

From ancient times (on Earth) to the early medieval period, when monolithic religious posturing shut them down (paving the way for the widespread plagues that reframed the entire culture and -- eventually -- destabilized the religion: a nice payback), communal public baths have been a feature of nearly every culture, and it's true Out Here as well. Each time they find a town, they've learned to make the public baths one of the first things they look for, because if they don't find any, they leave at once.

They haven't found any baths on the last two worlds, but here they're huge. Segregated -- but that isn't really a problem; not as much of a warning sign as their absence would be. The city is the largest they've seen yet. Larger than Chulak, which means it's larger than something a _Goa'uld_ would allow, and that's comforting. They've seen _Goa'uld_ artifacts by now -- it’s been 180 days; one of the few absolute luxuries they've allowed themselves is paper and pen, to keep a record (terse, coded) of their time in this universe, so Dani knows how long it's been, or fairly close. _Goa'uld_ artifacts, but no _Goa'uld_ , and no one here is worried about immanent snakehead destruction-or-conquest, so either the _Goa'uld_ are a dead issue, or they're far away.

One hundred eighty days without Furlings, without Ori. Without anything to do but seek their own survival in any way they can. They're getting better at it.

This city is named Saarsabah. The derivation might ultimately be Persian -- it _is_ built along a river -- which means (if they're guessing right) that its name is _River City_. There's very little romance in place names. Most of them translate to one of three things: _My City, The God's City_ , or _Here_. The city looks as Persian as anything else, which means it doesn't really look Persian at all. The climate is warm.

There are wine-shops near the baths. Daniel checks several before finding one he beckons her into. There are both women and men inside, obvious family groups, so it's a respectable place. He leads her to a table and goes to the counterman to find out what their money is worth here. She expects him to come back with wine for both of them -- they don't have much money, but the price of a table is a purchase -- but he only brings one cup.

"Stay here until I come back," he says, setting the clay cup in front of her. He drops his traveling bag on the ground at her feet, puts a few coins on the table. Almost half their money. New unfamiliar coins are mixed in with the old; change from his purchase.

"Where are you going?" she asks automatically. Not worried. Not yet.

"Just stay here. I'll be back." He walks out before she can question him further.

#

She sips slowly, making the cup last. The wine is thin and sour, undoubtedly the cheapest thing on the bill of fare, but that's all right; she doesn't like wine anyway. When the cup is empty she dawdles as long as she dares, then gets a refill. With her third cup, the counterman gives her a piece of bread as well. She isn't sure whether it's custom or charity, but she doesn't care; she thanks him solemnly, copying the bow she's seen others use. One of the other patrons passes her a small dish of oil when she sits back down. That, she is sure, is charity; it's a dipping-sauce for the bread, which is flint-hard, and she's seen others paying for it; the wine-shop sells a few food items: bread and oil and sausage. The oil softens the bread a little. The bread takes the edge off the alcohol.

They're starting to light the lamps in the street when Daniel comes back.

He's clean-shaven now, hair trimmed short. He smiles at her as he passes her table on the way to the counter, but it's only a twitch of his lips; there's no expression on his face. When he comes back to the table, he's carrying a bottle and a cup, and the counterman's boy is following with a tray.

There's a sausage -- a large one -- and a loaf, a pitcher of water and two dishes of sauce. One is the same green oil she had some of before. The other is dark and smells of fish.

Daniel sits down. He takes out his knife and begins to cut the sausage. He smells of perfume.

"There's an inn not too far from here we can stay at. I've got directions. It's supposed to be clean and respectable. We'll have to go soon, though. There's a curfew. I'm afraid you'll have to wait until tomorrow for a bath. I thought you'd want to eat first, though."

_Daniel, where did you get the money?_

She doesn't ask. She knows. He went to the baths, and traditionally, often, they served as an assignation-house for prostitution -- that's why the Church closed them down, forbidding public bathing and opening the way to the Black Death -- but that was _female_ prostitution...

Not in Greece. Not in Rome. Not in any culture with segregated baths.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

"Were you?" he answers. He reaches for the wine. Wax holds the stopper in place. He draws his own knife and cuts the wax, working the stopper free.

 _Yes. No. But -- oh god -- not to be judgmental or parochial or anything, but men's and women's bodies are_ designed _to fit together that way. And men's and men's ... aren't. And I don't know what you've been doing, or if it means that someone's hurt you. Did someone -- more than one someone -- stuff a cock up your ass and fuck you until you bled, or have you just been down on your knees for the last few hours?_

"I survived," she says quietly. She bites into her half of the sausage. It's tough and greasy and the spices are eye-watering, but it's food, and he's eaten the food she's bought the same way without a single word of complaint.

"So will I," he says. He pours. The wine is as thick as syrup, but he drinks it neat. She sips hers -- sweet as candy, and much finer (obviously) than what she was drinking before. She tops the cup up with water and stirs the mixture with her finger.

She sets down the sausage and reaches for the bread. Tears off a piece and dips it into the fish sauce. It's soft; new bread. The other was charity, then, and she's glad they've been able to repay it by making these purchases, though she doesn't want to wonder about what the counterman must think.

"H'm," she says, chewing. "I think the locals have invented liquid tuna." She dips the bread again and offers it to him. "Try it."

#

Daniel goes to the baths every day. Saarsabah is a richer city than Jund was, and the economics of scarcity dictate that Daniel fetches a higher price than she did at the same trade. She wonders if there will ever come a time when they can really find the humor in that. By the third day they've rented a furnished room; not the worst quarter of town; far from the best.

At night he lets her hold him, and that's good. What he does during the day -- the baths close when they light the first lamps in the city -- isn't making love and it isn't really having sex; it's using his body and letting it be used -- as a commodity, just as she did -- and she doubts there's any pleasure in it for him. Even when he's aroused -- in bed, with her -- he won't penetrate her, or let her bring him to climax in any way. Their bed is chaste. It's a difficult time.

The first day they were here Daniel went out and bought them both new clothes. More suitable for the climate -- and she has to veil here; the hooded traveler's cloak she has will keep her from being stopped on the street but it's too hot to be comfortable. It's not a waste of money, but it's an expenditure, and she knows where the money is coming from.

When they moved into their new place, Dani did her best to make herself useful to their new landlady. Mimlal was suspicious of her offer to help with the chores at first, but what Dani needs, even more than to be paid for her labor, is information. She's willing to fetch water from the public cistern, fetch bread from the baker, sweep the street and the floors, if Mimlal will only _talk_ to her. It doesn't really take long to get her started.

Of course, the woman's no fool.

#

"Are you a whore, dear? I won't have you here if you are. There are other places." They're sitting at Mimlal's table, in her kitchen. It's cool. They're drinking water with lemon.

Dani shakes her head slightly. "I don't."

Mimlal sighs. "You're poor as Night's Goat."

"We have the money for your room, Mimlal." Ten days in advance, or they wouldn't have gotten it at all, but it was still cheaper than staying at the inn. And Daniel still has to pay to get into the baths; they have the cost of another tenday of lodging beyond that tucked into the pouch around Dani's neck -- no more than that -- and she's damned if she's going to spend one single coin on food.

"You do. And you're not afraid of work. But I'm not a _temrad_ to have a houseful of servants. Still, I think that fool of a baker gave me an extra loaf, and you might as well have it as the goat."

Mimlal gets up and brings the bread to the table. The loaves here are round and flat. Disk-shaped.

"Thank you," Dani says. "I'll save it to share with Daniel when he comes. He's looking for work," she adds, because if Mimlal doesn't want Dani taking men up to their room, she's fairly sure Mimlal wouldn't approve of what Daniel is probably doing now.

"Maybe he'll find it. You'd think it would be easier, with half the men gone to the army, but everyone has a cousin. Still, perhaps he'll find fortune. My Ghazul is with the prince, may the Saints smile on him. Two years now."

This place is organized into several city-states, and they're at war. Mimlal's man is with the army. The fighting isn't likely to come anywhere near Saarsabah, because Saarsabah is the city closest to the Stargate -- the Saints' Doorway -- and it is forbidden to bring war here by ancient law. But there's fighting. Dani worries about Daniel, but apparently serving with the army is an 'honor' reserved for citizens, so he's safe from conscription. Mimlal has no idea what the war is about, and she doesn't care. It's a matter for princes, she says, and nothing to do with them.

The next day, Mimlal asks if Dani can read.

Most of the population of Saarsabah is illiterate. They speak English here -- one of the greatest riddles of Dani's life at Stargate Command (and one she'll never solve now), is why nearly everyone they met through the Stargate spoke English -- but the written language is a form of archaic Persian. The nobles speak what must be a variation of Persian; Dani's heard it on the street, and recognizes it but can't follow it, though she speaks both Dari and Farsi. She could learn it with a larger sample, but after having listened to Mimlal's tales of the nobility she doesn't want to risk getting too close to the nobles. When she says she has a little learning of letters (she can read Old, Middle, and Classic Persian -- just for starters -- but it's better to underplay her skill until she sees what she's up against), Mimlal hands her a letter. It's from her husband, written by a scribe. Dani puzzles her way through it carefully -- half-guessing -- and then reads it aloud. Mimlal is delighted, and asks if Dani can write a reply. If she can, Mimlal says, she will pay. And that's how Dani discovers that 'scribe' is a recognized profession here, and you don't need a license to practice it.

Of course Dani says yes.

A scribe's kit is expensive; she could write a hand-delivered note on a page from her journal with what she already owns, but something that must go all the way to the army must be done in proper form; written on good vellum in ink and sealed. After she finds out how much even the cheapest scribe's kit costs, she talks to Daniel, counting coins. It will take all their coin -- all this, and what he thinks he can get them tomorrow -- and she'll have to sell their other clothes -- if she can -- to make up the difference if she wants to buy it quickly enough to satisfy Mimlal. Nothing left for food, or to pay toward the next tenday of lodging if the gamble fails. But work as a scribe is a step up. A step away from the bathhouse.

Mimlal helps her sell the 'foreign' clothes, getting (Dani suspects) a better price than she could have gotten herself. The day after that Dani goes back to the shop and buys the kit: a large flat wooden box with a hinged lid; it contains storage compartments for pens, inks, paper, seal. The seal is lead, and part of the cost is having her personal symbol cut into it. She hesitates over what to choose, and settles on the destination glyph for Abydos. If she'd never discovered that symbol at all, all those years ago, everything in her life would have been different. Hers, Sammy's, Jack's, Teal'c's. Daniel's too, she imagines.

The kit includes a set of form letters as well. In case someone doesn't know what to say, all she has to do is copy them out: the man she buys them from reads them to her -- she has to pay extra for that -- there would have been money left over if she hadn't, but fluency in the local script is more important to her than saving an amount of money that won't make any real difference to their ability to survive here -- and after that she is confident in her ability to read the local language. She writes Mimlal's letter (not charging her extra for three colors of ink), and takes her fee in goat stew (for both her and Daniel) at Mimlal's table for the next three days.

Word gets around: a scribe, two scribes, at Mimlal's house. There are other customers. And Daniel can stop going to the baths.

#

It's been two hundred seventy days -- pretty close, anyway -- since she met Daniel at the Mirror.

They've stayed at Mimlal's, but they have one of the largest rooms now. Ground floor, with a table to work at when her customers and Daniel's come to get letters written, and Dani owns three changes of clothes, and a different colored veil for every day of the week. She eats meat almost every day -- and she _eats_ every day -- she goes to the baths whenever she wants to, and her clothes and her bed and her body are all clean. She even owns two books.

Dear god, they're rich.

They each own a scribe's case now. Daniel chose the symbol for Earth as his seal. Mimlal thinks that Daniel should try to get a job as a clerk -- men can be clerks if they can read and write, though women can't -- or at least pay for a stall in the bazaar, where he could attract more and better-paying customers. Mimlal thinks they're cousins, that they're married, and certainly they don't disagree with her.

And Dani has -- almost -- what she'd wished for one hundred thirty days ago in the primeval twilight of an uninhabited world. A safe place, a bed, and Daniel in it. He wakes her in the night when her dreams turn to nightmares. She holds him through the long nights when he can't sleep at all. They give each other everything they have -- all they are, all that's left. She doesn't know if it's happiness, but it's something like homeostasis. It's more than she ever expected to have. But both of them are restless. They've been here a long time, almost a hundred days. They want to move on. And this time they'd like to do it with gold instead of silver, even though they think they can probably find work as scribes on the next world, in the next city, too. That means seeking out richer customers before they go.

#

The inns and taverns are good places to work. The owners don't mind; it attracts customers. And travelers always seem to need letters written.

"I'll come back for you when they light the first lamps," Daniel says, stopping outside the door. "Be safe."

"Of course I'll be safe," she says, faintly cross. "And Mimlal's making chicken with apricots tonight."

Most nights they eat with Mimlal, paying for the supplies and a little more for her labor. It's cheaper -- and better -- than the cookshops, and all of them like the company. Most of Mimlal's boarders eat elsewhere, before Second Lamps; a few take cold meals and brew tea in their rooms. By Second Lamps the only ones on the streets are the City Watch and the Children of Night. That's Mimlal's term -- Dani thinks vaguely of drug-dealers, though the Children of Night are more likely to be housebreakers and other members of a more traditional pre-modern underworld -- and neither group -- the Watch or the Children -- comes into Mimlal's neighborhood. At night in Saarsabah the streets are quiet. At night in Saarsabah, after the evening meal, Dani and Daniel go to their room, and latch the door and light the lamp, and lie naked together in their clean bed and touch each other.

"Oh, can't miss that," Daniel agrees. He doesn't kiss her -- not in public -- but he smiles, and goes off with his own scribe's case to find another establishment to ply his trade. He doesn't have to walk her to the door of the tavern and come back for her. She's veiled, and the streets are safe. But it's nice anyway.

Dani goes inside the tavern. A respectable place, men and women together. Women veil here but they aren't segregated; an interesting culture. As she walks through the door there's a flash of light. She stops, alarmed, and looks. There's a green jewel set into the wall.

"Don't fear, lady. It's a gift to my great-grandfather from the Prince himself, to keep me from being robbed blind. It only strikes down devils, not sweet innocents such as yourself."

She looks up to find the innkeeper regarding her tolerantly. The other patrons are all watching her as well. Interested, entertained. No one seems to be upset.

"Is it truly from the hand of the Prince? May I look closer?"

"Of course. It will not harm you."

She walks up to it and peers closely at it. It's obviously something large that has been mortared into the wall, but some of the gold housing of the gem is visible. She can make out a few of the letters inscribed on the bezel. It's _Goa'uld_. (She and Daniel have seen a few _Goa'uld_ artifacts on the worlds they've visited, but no sign of the _Goa'uld_. Perhaps the _Goa'uld_ Empire fell thousands of years ago in this universe. Or they're in a part of the galaxy far from the area it claims.) She touches the device, feigning reverence. She can make out enough of the symbols to guess at its function now. And she wonders how the hell a _Goa'uld_ gene-scanning device came to be mortared into the wall in a Saarsabah tavern, and just how the owner thinks it's protecting him.

"Truly, I believe it can see into men's souls," she says. Or at least into their genetic code. The innkeeper smiles, and she walks over to the counter, showing him her scribe's box. They've gotten off to a good start; he has no objection to her staying. She purchases a pitcher of sweetened lemon water and he brings it to her table himself.

"Perhaps I should write down your reverend ancestor's story?" she asks. "So that it can be preserved for your many grandsons?"

"It is a very long story," the innkeeper says, "and I am but a poor man. Ask anyone. All Saarsabah will tell you that Arzad is as poor as Night's Goat."

She keeps her face bland. Arzad is anything but poor. "Perhaps you will tell it to me first," Dani says. "And I will tell you how much to set it down, exactly as you say it. Four colors of ink, and a drawing of the Prince's Jewel besides."

"Four colors?" Arzad asks. "And a drawing?"

"Four," she says firmly. "And a drawing. With gold -- see? Here is gold in my box." She takes out the small jar of liquid gold and holds it up for him to see. "But first I must earn coin, or I will not eat, and I see that some are waiting to buy. If I do not hear your story today, I will come tomorrow. Earlier."

Arzad looks interested but cautious. "You will come tomorrow? Just to hear? I do not promise to buy, you understand."

"Yes. Just to hear. Old tales interest me."

"Come tomorrow after prayers, then. Come to the back, where the kitchen is. My wife will give you breakfast."

"I will be honored to eat at the table of your wife."

Arzad moves away, and her first client sits down.

#

Business is brisk and the money is good. Dani leaves a lot of it on the table -- it's the custom here, to show that she's popular -- but she hates doing that and sneaks the larger coins into her purse as often as she can. Most of what she's asked to write is simple, though there are one or two bills of sale, so she does well -- the real money for a scribe is in legal documents -- and she thinks about Arzad's project. She can probably talk him into it, and it might even be worth gold.

He's just lighting the first of the two lamps over the counter -- warning to the patrons that curfew is coming soon -- when Daniel walks in the door.

The jewel in the wall flashes red.

And worse than that, the wall starts _talking._ It's talking in _Goa'uld_ , so no one can understand it but the two of them, and it's fairly muffled by the mortar, but it's saying something about 'genetics' and either 'identical' or 'identify.'

Daniel backs up, but it doesn't help, and she's inside, so he jumps through the doorway to get to her, and Arzad is staring at him in horror -- along with everyone else in the tavern -- and she slams her case shut and grabs a fistful of the money on the table -- there's three sheets of vellum and a pen and an open bottle of ink still out but she doesn't have time to pack -- and she goes running up to the counter.

"It's all right!" she says, and she's dropping coins everywhere and she can't pick them up. "He's my cousin!"

"A demon!" Arzad says, and he has a club on the counter now, and everyone's backing away from them, and in a moment this is going to become a mob.

"No!" she says desperately. "No! I told you I know old stories -- I know the story of your jewel. It's _Goa'uld_ technology -- _Goa'uld magic_! It sees into people -- not their hearts, but their bodies. Daniel and I are just very much alike, that's all. That's what the jewel saw. That's what the voice is saying now. It's saying that we're alike!"

"Then the magic is saying that you and your cousin are cursed," Arzad says harshly, lifting the club. "Go. Both of you. Never return."

#

They leave the tavern and they run. She drops more coins. They duck into an alleyway and listen for pursuit, but there isn't any. Her hands are shaking as she opens her belt-pouch and drops the remaining coins into it. She's lost half of what she made tonight, and some of her supplies.

"Oh god," she whispers.

"I guess we don't go back there again," Daniel says.

"How many goddamned taverns have a _Goa'uld_ gene-scanner stuck into the wall?" she demands. "Oh, Daniel, I saw it when I walked in, I knew what it was. I didn't think--"

"Well, who would?" he says reasonably. "Tomorrow we'll check around, see how far the story's gotten. We're planning to leave anyway."

#

By the next day, the story's (apparently) all over town -- Dani hears it at the cistern the next morning when she goes to get water -- but the details are nearly unrecognizable. She doesn't figure in them at all, and in the story she hears, the Prince's Jewel at Arzad's turns Daniel instantly into his true form, a monstrous scaled beast complete with fangs and claws, before bathing him in a beam of light from which he runs screaming. But if they needed more reason to leave, this was it.

They take two days to sell their things -- the books they've bought, their extra clothing -- and to replace the items in her box. They buy food for the journey and the heaviest cloaks they can find in the marketplace. They don't want to hurry too much. They don't want to look as if they're running away, just in case someone is looking for them.

They buy the Gate address for a world called Paras in the market; it's supposed to be wealthy and prosperous; a trading-partner of Saarsabah. They'll know when they get there whether it's a place they want to stay. If not, there are other destinations.

She wonders what season it will be on the other side of the Gate. It's winter now in Saarsabah, which means cool damp days that turn to twilight long before First Lamps. Spring will bring heavy rains -- so Mimlal has said -- and she'll be just as glad to miss that.

They tell Mimlal that they're leaving, and Dani makes her a gift of the prettiest of her veils, the blue one with the embroidery. She could have sold it, but she'd only get a copper or two for it. It's a luxury to be able to give a gift. And Mimlal has been kind.

"I shall miss you both," Mimlal says.

"I shall hope that Ghazul returns to you soon," Dani replies. She knows -- self-knowledge is an absolute possession now -- that she won't miss Mimlal. She'll have forgotten her before another twenty days have passed. Mimlal isn't real, not really. Only Daniel is real. And only Daniel hears the unspoken words. Mimlal, like nearly everyone else -- now, before -- hears what she wishes to hear, the words she thinks must have been said. And so she hugs them both goodbye, certain she will be missed in return.

It's an hour before First Lamps when they walk out of Saarsabah for the last time. The Stargate is about a mile from the edge of the city; they're leaving this late in the day to avoid other travelers. By the time they reach the Stargate, it will be Second Lamps, and there should be no one to see where they go when they dial. The habit of caution.

They pass through all the districts they know -- past the small and decidedly second-rate bathhouse where they both went by choice, past the huge grand bathhouse (used by most of the city) where Daniel once whored himself. Out through the city gates -- Dani's never seen them closed -- up the road to the Saints' Door. The day is already dark -- dim, really. They have a torch with them, and will ask fire at the last tavern, half a mile up the road.

But something doesn't feel right, and they both sense it. They walk faster. The sight-lines will be better once they're in open fields; perhaps they won't light the torch after all. They're not the only ones on the road, but nearly everyone else is heading toward the city, wanting to get indoors before curfew.

There's a coach stopped on the road ahead. It's not facing the city, it's facing the Stargate. It looks foreign.

There's a man standing in the doorway of one of the roadside taverns, and he's standing too still.

The coach door opens.

"Dani, run," Daniel says quietly.

She drops her cloak and her bag and takes off at right angles to the road. Escape and evasion; never a formal course for the Gate Teams, though more than a few of them spent plenty of time being chased. Of course, most of the Gate Teams were military; they'd had the courses before they got to the SGC. She hadn't. There's a science in running away and Jack had explained the basics. And oh, she'd gotten so much practice over the years...

Daniel is right behind her. Off the road immediately. Into the ditch and out, stumbling through the gloom, across somebody's dooryard; it's the far edge of the city; they can see open fields, still bright in the twilight -- it's an orchard, no real cover -- around the back of the house -- no, it's a smithy -- and through a bunch of standing horses, and she doesn't even know why she's running--

She hears the sound of a zat.

And she spins, turns back, she can't see Daniel, but she sees the coruscating blue lightning of a zat discharge still playing over a body on the ground -- Daniel's down, two men are over him -- one kneeling -- and the other one is looking at her and _she can't leave him--_

The standing man shoots her with the zat. Oh, god, she'd forgotten how much that _hurt._

She's flung backward by the spasming of her muscles. She doesn't feel herself hit the ground. And she doesn't pass out, not quite, but she's twitching and thrashing and incapable of moving under her own power, and men run over to her and roll her into a net -- every movement hurts -- and her glasses are askew, digging into her face, and they walk back to the coach with her, carrying her between them like a carpet. They drop her inside. Between the net wrapped over her face and the fact that her glasses are askew, she can't see.

"You have both of them?" someone says. The sound comes from outside. No one has climbed inside the coach with her (and with Daniel? She thinks he's here too, but her physical senses are still unreliable).

"Yes, Master Ixis. The man and the woman from Arzad's. It's them."

"Hm. Yes. Well. We'll hope so. For your sakes. And theirs, of course."

The door is closed, and even the dim light is gone. The coach begins to move, and after a few minutes the effect of the zat-blast wears off.

"Daniel?" she says hoarsely. If they're separated, they have a meeting place, a plan, places to leave messages for each other, but the thought of having to escape, to try that, to wait for him, not knowing whether he's dead or alive...

"Here. I wish I wasn't."

"Me, too." She wishes they both weren't, together.

#

Whatever they're wrapped in, they can breathe, but it clings; they can't get free. On their backs is the safest; the coach doesn't have any real springs. The horses are trotting, but not running, and she hasn't felt it turn around. Down the road toward the Stargate, then.

"Kidnapped," Daniel says. "Because we were at Arzad's." _Because we set off the machine at Arzad's._

"Used zats. Not taking us back to Saarsabah," she adds.

" _Goa'uld_?" he asks. These are the first zats they've seen in a very long time -- there was one in a market once, on a world they didn't stay, but she thinks it was broken. A hundred days ago? More? After Jund, before Saarsabah. She wonders if it would be better to be a prisoner of the _Goa'uld_ or to have the Saints' Priests think they're demons. Demons would be preferable, she decides. At least that would end -- eventually -- in death. And they do not dare give the _Goa'uld_ access to their minds.

"I don't know. It doesn't seem to be quite their style."

"Maybe they've hired local talent."

The coach stops for a few minutes. Then it starts again, and they feel the coach tilt as it bumps -- slowly, carefully -- up the steps of the Stargate.

"I don't believe--" Daniel says in disbelief. _I don't believe they're actually taking a horse-drawn coach through the Stargate._

They pass through the Event Horizon.

It's bad enough just to walk through. Even after Sammy fixed the Earth Gate (somehow) walking through the Event Horizon still felt like dropping in a very fast elevator -- sideways -- and it wasn't because of the cobbled-together dialing interface; the off-Earth Gates are just the same. You feel like you're falling, even though you're not. A tiny percentage of the people on the Teams simply couldn't handle it -- either immediately or eventually -- and had to be downchecked. Lying on her back -- blind, cocooned -- magnifies the sensation. Dani gulps hard. It's worse going down the steps on the other side; the coach tilts forward and they slide, their heads banging against the forward wall of the coach. Wherever they are now, it's colder.

#

After perhaps an hour the coach stops. The door opens -- bright light -- and she's lifted out. Carried (she hears boots on stone; she can't see anything through the layers of netting, but she hears a sound that may be a door opening and closing). She's set down on a floor -- not too roughly -- and unwrapped from the netting. She blinks, gropes for her glasses, settles them back into place, gets to her feet. No one stops her. Daniel's here as well (unwrapped from his netting and getting to his feet; his expression is bland, noncommittal).

By the light, it's midday here. They're indoors. The room is cold. High-ceilinged; as high as it is long -- about thirty feet -- but not deep. There are windows (large, but set too high in the wall for them to try to break them and jump out) and a skylight. The walls are white and plain -- they look like plasterwork -- and the floor is stone. There are doors on both the short walls of the room. They were brought in through one (obviously), but they're in the center of the room, so she can't tell which, and the other probably leads to somewhere they don't want to go. There are six large men in the room with them (the same ones who captured them on Saarsabah, she thinks). None of them carries a zat. Pants, vest, tunic, boots -- the men's clothing gives Dani no clues about the society (though of course they could have been dressing to blend in on Saarsabah). At least they don't seem to be Jaffa.

There's one piece of furniture in the room -- a chair, on a low platform, set against the outside wall. It's wood, ornate, cushioned, but not of _Goa'uld_ design. The man sitting in it looks perfectly ordinary -- brown hair, brown eyes -- but he's wearing extremely expensive clothing -- brocades, velvets -- a long open robe over a tunic and pants, low boots. He has on a necklace, bracelets, large rings on every finger. All are jeweled.

He's holding the zat.

"My name is Ixis. When you speak to me, you will address me as 'Master Ixis.' You are now my property. If I use this device on you, you will die. Do you understand?" he says.

They glance at each other. Daniel's face is set. Neither of them speaks. There's a long moment of silence. Ixis sets the zat in his lap. "Temran, go tell Rashul to bring the green box. You will now remove your clothing."

One of the six large men -- obviously Temran -- begins walking toward one of the doors (and okay, that tells them which door is the one they _don't_ want; she doesn't even need to look at Daniel to know he knows that too). Ixis delivers the second sentence of his speech in the same inflection as his first; it takes Dani a moment to realize that the two of them are being addressed again.

"No," Daniel says calmly.

Ixis sighs and shakes his head (doesn't seem to be upset, not yet). He raises a finger, signaling to his enforcers. Temran doesn't stop walking toward the door, but two of the other goons approach Daniel. They grab him by the arms and a third one pulls out a knife. That leaves two hostiles uncommitted.

Dani doesn't bother to try to help Daniel. She has another target in mind. The moment everybody starts moving she launches herself at Ixis. She still has her belt-knife (neither of them has been searched or disarmed), and even if she can't manage to draw it maybe she can strangle Ixis before he shoots her.

Ixis doesn't even reach for the zat. He just puts a hand on her when she touches him. She hears a popping sound; the pain is so abrupt and intense that light flares behind her eyes, and the next thing Dani knows, she's being hauled to her feet by one of the thugs and another one is holding a knife to her throat, but it's not because she's being threatened. Nobody's bothering to do that. They're just cutting off her clothes. She's being hauled about like a rag doll -- the ache is fading fast, but her body is still numbly unresponsive, and if she wasn't being held on her feet she'd probably fall -- as her clothes (good clothes, dammit, and expensive), are cut to pieces and dropped to the floor, and she's still too dazed to even kick when the man stripping her bends down to drag her boots off. She's starting to worry in earnest, because it looks as if Ixis possesses more and higher technology than anything they've seen anywhere Out Here yet. But he isn't a _Goa'uld_. Probably.

She rolls her head sideways -- it feels heavy -- and looks toward Daniel. He's as naked as she is by now, and there are lines on his skin where the knife cut too close as he struggled. Now that they're both naked, Ixis gets to his feet. He walks closer, bringing the zat with him. He approaches Daniel first, but he stays out of kicking range. "It is better to cooperate," Ixis says chidingly, regarding the scratches on Daniel's skin. "Hm. So many scars. No matter."

"You said we're 'property,'" Daniel says. He's out of breath with struggling, and with (Dani thinks) the effort of holding his anger in check. They need to gather information, though. Fighting (apparently) isn't going to work.

"You belong to me now. If you please me, I will prepare you for market," Ixis says (as if that's something they should _want_ ).

"And if we don't please you?" Dani asks. She breathes deeply, pushing away the pain. The weakness is receding, and the man behind her lets her take more of her own weight until she's standing on her own. (Whatever Ixis did to her, it wasn't zat-energy, though she might actually have survived a second zatting at this point -- it's been long enough since she was zatted that it's possible, and no one's really absolutely sure -- _was_ absolutely sure -- how long between shots you had to go to be sure of not going into instantaneous cardiac arrest when you were hit by a second shot. All Teal'c ever knew was that the safe window varied, and of course there was no way to test it...)

"T't," Ixis says mildly. "It is always best to please me, child. Certainly I have indulged you up until now because you are frightened, but I would hardly do you any favors if I did not correct your behavior in future. How would you find a suitable buyer?"

She doesn't answer that. She doesn't want a buyer. She doesn't want the two of them to have been kidnapped by a deranged slaver, either, though as an alternative to being prisoners of the Saarsabah Inquisition or the _Goa'uld_ (assuming Ixis isn't a _Goa'uld_ , or working for one) it's marginally better.

The door opens; it's on Daniel's side of the room (the side Dani's guessing -- provisionally -- leads deeper into the building). Temran is returning. There's someone -- Rashul? -- with him. She's carrying a green box; it's about ten inches square. Dani has never seen anyone who looks like Rashul before (not in all her travels, not in all _their_ travels). Rashul's shining smooth-polished skin is as black as obsidian. Her waist-length hair is silvery white and has horizontal bars of color across it that are as black as her skin. Her only garment is a sleeveless transparent pale tunic that barely covers her _mons veneris_. She's wearing a silver collar. She's a slave. Or _another_ slave, since apparently the two of them are slaves (at least temporarily).

"First we will see if you are worth my time at all," Ixis says.

Dani remembers the snatch of conversation she overheard outside Saarsabah. _'We'll hope so. For your sakes. And theirs, of course.'_ What happens to them if they aren't worth Ixis's time?

Rashul and Temran approach Ixis. Ixis hands the zat to Temran and opens the box; Rashul is still holding it. Dani can't see what's in it from where she is -- about ten feet to their left -- but Daniel can. He starts to struggle again. Two of the men are still holding him. They aren't lifting him off his feet -- that would just give him leverage to kick -- they're pushing down on his arms and shoulders as hard as they can, trying to make him kneel. Her muscles tense at the thought of what might be in that box to make Daniel struggle that way, and the man behind her tightens his grip on her arms and hauls her shoulders in hard. The one in front steps in close, crowding her so she can't fight back.

Ixis steps toward Daniel without haste and cups a hand between his legs. And Daniel ... Daniel screams, managing to tear himself completely loose from his guards, body going straight and rigid for a moment as he flings two strong men twice his size off their feet before he goes crashing to the floor. Daniel doesn't even twitch as he goes down. Dani smells a raw ammonia stink. He's pissed himself.

She feels suddenly cold -- colder -- and the room goes bright. Her mouth tastes of metal. Adrenaline overload. Fight or flee, and instincts she wanted to bury (that were never buried) are telling her everything Jack ever taught her about assessing her situation and what to do now. If Daniel is dead--

_(oh please oh god don't let him be dead he can't be dead not him not Daniel not Daniel too)_

\--then surely the Furlings will come for her at last and she won't run this time she'll give them anything they ask for if they'll only take this universe down around her--

"This wastes my time," Ixis says, sounding weary. "Is he dead?" He holds out his hand; one of the thugs produces a cloth and wipes it carefully.

Rashul hands the box to Temran, bends down, and feels for a pulse. "No, Master Ixis."

"Then pick him up."

The guards haul Daniel back to his feet. He's out cold -- his head lolls -- and his mouth is bleeding; bitten. Rashul picks up his glasses and offers them to Ixis.

"Yes, child, very good. I'm sure they will be an amusing curiosity." Ixis takes them and tucks them into a pocket of his robe. Dani stands and stares (not dead, and relief stuns her to stillness). She doesn't struggle. There's no point; she knows she won't leave Daniel behind, even if the reverse isn't true. She watches closely as Ixis puts Daniel's hand into the box and holds it there for a moment before lifting it out again. Then Ixis walks toward her (Rashul follows with the box, and Dani is trying to _pay attention_ because this situation has gone from inconvenience to disaster to horror so fast, and how their captors behave with each other is information, and she and Daniel need information -- desperately -- if they're going to understand these people well enough to _get the fuck out of here._ )

The man in front of her backs away deferentially as Ixis approaches. Dani can see into the box now. It's a _Goa'uld_ device, but she doesn't recognize it. A large flat wedge-shaped pad, and a place for a display beside it. She lifts her hand tentatively (it didn't hurt Daniel -- at least it didn't _injure_ him, not as far as she could see -- and she can't escape putting her hand into it because even if she could somehow fight her way free in the next fifteen seconds she won't leave without Daniel). She can't lift her hand far enough -- not the way she's held -- but as she begins the motion, the guard behind her lets go of her arm. Now she can.

"Yes, yes," Ixis says encouragingly.

On the other side of the room Daniel gasps and chokes, rousing, then gags and starts to vomit. The guard lowers him to his knees, but he can't manage to stay there. He falls to his face, unable to catch himself on his hands. He gags and coughs, rolling to his side, and vomits again. Dani takes a half-step toward him -- reflexively -- though she knows she won't be let to move.

"T't." Ixis summons her attention back to him. She raises her hand further and puts it down on the pad. There's a long moment where the device does nothing at all. She's desperate for information, but she's damned if she'll ask. Then the display lights up and begins to scroll, the _Goa'uld_ symbols going by too fast for her to read. It ends in something unambiguous, however: two DNA helixes, first side-by-side, then moving to superimpose themselves over each other. Only one chromosome pair glows yellow, indicating there's a difference. Ixis reaches up and pats her cheek. She flinches away before she can stop herself, but there's no pain. "Good. Very good. Now we can begin," he says.

He plucks her glasses from her face, and everything fuzzes and recedes slightly. Ixis makes that clicking noise again as he tucks them into his pocket. She'd like to explain that she _needs them to see_ \-- that they both do -- but Dani's pretty sure Ixis knows that. He leaves the room (followed by Rashul and the box, and it's _Goa'uld_ gene-scanning technology -- if not _Goa'uld_ gene- _manipulating_ technology -- and if there were anything in the universe _(universes)_ to pray to, Dani would be praying to it right now that Ixis _is_ a slaver, that he _does_ just want her and Daniel because he thinks they're genetic freaks, that he isn't some courtier of Nirrti's, that the two of them haven't fallen into the hands of the _Goa'uld_ after all).

After a long enough wait for Ixis to be safely gone, the guards indicate it's time for them to move on by the simple expedient of grabbing and pulling (none of them have spoken -- to them or to each other -- and she wonders if they're mute). Daniel tries to walk, but he can't even stand. When they see that, his guards simply lift him by the arms -- one on each side -- and carry him. The other two watch him carefully. Dani's two guards each take one of her arms, but once they see that she'll walk where she's led and not try to run, they let go. It's impersonal, but not (aside from what Ixis did to Daniel) brutal. She's a connoisseur of captivity. And of captors.

Dani isn't sure how well Daniel's tracking right now; so she tries to pay attention to everything she sees for both of them. To escape, they need to know the layout. (She doesn't know -- exactly -- how they got in, where the exits to the complex are, or where the Stargate is from here. She tells herself to worry about that later.) From the skylight room they go down a hallway and through a courtyard (only two doors in the skylight room; they have to have been brought in through the other one, so "inward" is through the courtyard). The courtyard looks faintly Moorish (three stories, colonnades), and it seems to be open to the air (but the air is warm as they cross it, and they were both cold when the coach came through the Stargate, and they're only about an hour from the Stargate, and it was cold all the way, so… maybe not). There's a fountain in the middle of the courtyard; she thinks of Saarsabah. Would leaving a day earlier, a day later, have made any difference? She's thirsty, too, but not thirsty enough to be willing to ask for water. She recognizes the symptoms of emotional shock (nothing to do but wait them out and hope her mind clears soon). She and Daniel have been beggars and whores and mass murderers; she wonders why being called a slave is so hard. It's only a word, a label, not something she believes. Teal'c taught her that slavery is a thing of the mind; that the mind can free the spirit, that together they can free the body.

Teal'c is dead.

Across the courtyard, through another door (wood, a simple handle, no lock that Dani can see), another corridor (white plaster walls and ceiling, stone floor), and through another door. Behind this door lies an unpleasant shock. It's a large room full of metal cages (she thinks of the penal cages on Bedrosia). The room has no windows. There are artificial lights in the ceiling. It contains ten cages in two rows of five (exhibiting a sophisticated level of manufacture, since they seem to be constructed of steel or alloy). All empty. They're cube-shaped, a little less than five feet on a side (a little on the small side as jail cells go), all faces covered with a large-ring mesh of some kind. The cages are spaced about six feet apart, and are set an equal distance (six feet) away from the walls. There's nothing in this room but the cages, but the space still reminds Dani of a lab where specimens are kept (she thinks -- uneasily -- of Nirrti again), and she'd rather be a slave than a specimen, if those are her only two choices. Temran steps forward and opens one of the cages. Only one.

"In," he says to her (so they _can_ talk; interesting). Dani's escort steps away from her, apparently convinced she's going to walk right in.

"Where are you taking him?" she asks, because it's very clear that she's meant to stay here and Daniel … isn't.

Temran shrugs. "He stinks."

"Let me go with you. I can take care of him."

"In," Temran repeats. And he might have been willing to answer one question (sort of) but it looks like she's exhausted his store of patience. She still hesitates.

"Go," Daniel whispers raggedly (conscious, but still not standing or walking under his own power). She hesitates for another second, then walks into the cage. The door isn't the full height of the cube; she has to bend double and half-squat to get in, but she's _damned_ if she'll crawl. Temran closes the door behind her and the six of them leave with Daniel.

She waits until they're gone to test the door of her cell (cage), and carefully examine all the walls (at least they aren't electrified, thank fuck). There's an empty cage on one side of her, three empty ones on the other side, and (of course) another five empty ones across from her. The door is locked (or at least she can't open it), but it looks as if there's a way for only a section of it to be opened, probably to pass in food and water. The mesh is silvery, cold enough to the touch to be metal, it won't tear away from the frame, and the rings of the mesh are too small for her to get her hand through it. No way out, so she settles back to wait. It's not really uncomfortable, even though the cage isn't quite large enough for her to stand or lie full-length in, since she can sit or lie curled, and the floor is slightly padded (feels like plastic). It's cool enough in here for her to wish she had her clothes, but she's not actively uncomfortable (thirsty, hungry in a few hours, scared, and really pissed off, but she's been in much worse situations). Aside from the fact that her sinuses are starting to fill -- not too bad; the air seems to be filtered here -- but she sniffles a bit and rubs her eyes. They itch.

The really bad part of this is something no one but Daniel could understand, and Dani's not quite sure he could either (she won't ask him, in case he can), but being here like this -- captured, naked, locked up by aliens, and possibly about to be _dissected_ \-- is enough to trick some part of her mind into thinking that the last stretch of time _(how long_ was _it before she met Daniel at the Mirror?)_ never happened. It makes her imagine, no matter how hard she tries to cling to truth, to _sanity_ , that she's still Dr. Danielle Jackson, SG-1, that her team, her world _(Jack)_ are still out there (somewhere). And it's too painful to become that woman again (the woman who's been flayed from her bones universe by universe, death by death) but she can't seem to stop herself, and so, helplessly, Dani thinks of rescue, thinks of her _team_ , but she knows that the one isn't coming and the other was never born. If there _were_ an SGC here, this universe would have rejected either her or Daniel months and months ago. And without them (without SG-1), so many other things just never happen. She's in a position to know that absolutely.

About half an hour later (as well as she can judge), four of the guards bring Daniel back. Temran isn't one of them. Daniel's walking -- staggering -- under his own power now. He's also soaking wet. They prod him into the cage next to hers -- the middle one in the row -- not roughly, but not gently either; they simply don't care. She wants to ask if he's all right, but neither of them is all right just now. Once Daniel is penned into his own cage -- a much tighter fit for him than hers is for her -- they're left alone again. (Still no food, and no water, either. Dani wonders if she should complain to the ASPCA or to Amnesty International, and the mere fact that she can think of a joke like that at all -- much less at a time like this -- makes her want to cry. That's surprising enough to be frightening; she was sure she'd cried her last tear years ago.)

 _‹"He wanted us because we're genetically-identical,"›_ she says after a while. After a little thought, she's chosen French. Less likely they'll know it here than any of the Semitic languages, all of which seem to trace back, if you go far enough, to _Goa'uld. ‹"The device was a scanner. He wanted to confirm the story from Arzad's."›_

 _‹"And it did."›_ Daniel's voice is still hoarse and rough. He sounds exhausted. She knows he's colder than she is. Naked and wet is always colder than naked and dry.

 _‹"Yes. I got a good look at the readout,"›_ she agrees.

 _‹"If that's the only reason he wants us ... why does he care?"›_ Daniel asks after a long pause. He's tried and failed to tear the mesh off the sides of his cage, even with more upper-body strength than she has, so they're stuck.

_‹"I don't know."›_

But she hopes it's the only reason Ixis wants them. It has to be: there's no Stargate Command here, no Danielle/Daniel Jackson with a _Goa'uld_ price on her (or his) head. But there are still _Goa'uld_ here (or at least there were). Is Earth still Ra's fief? Or did the uprising in 3200BCE still happen? If it did, did Professor Erik Langford unearth the Stargate? Did he successfully get it out of German hands? Did President Roosevelt authorize experimentation with it, leading to Catherine's experiments half a century later? Did they ever get it to work without her (or Daniel) to translate the Coverstone? (Work _again_ of course, because once upon a nightmare, Ernest Littlefield walked through the Stargate when random attempts at 'cold calling', back in 1945, connected the Gate with Heliopolis.)

So many 'ifs', and no answers, and the questions aren't even particularly useful ones, so Dani doesn't even bother to ask them (not out loud). She sticks to what's useful in the here-and-now: what she saw on her way to this room, and what she guessed about it. Daniel tells her everything he saw -- more of the corridor, another room where he was herded into a corner and hosed down with soapy water (he thinks) and then clean water. Like a communal showers, except for the lack of communality. And showers.

 _‹"Hm. So. Escape?"›_ Daniel says, when they're all caught up.

 _‹"Where shall we go?"›_ she asks. They need a plan -- at least part of one -- _before_ they run. They have no friends, no allies, and they're back to Square One: no possessions. Worse than before, really: they don't even have clothes now.

Daniel shifts around, doing his best to get comfortable. It doesn't look as if it works very well. _‹"I have an idea. You won't like it."›_

 _‹"At the moment I'm feeling very liberal-minded,"›_ Dani answers drily. She wonders what he's thinking. Abydos? She wants to go home with all her heart, but Kasuf -- if Kasuf is even there in this universe -- would simply turn them over to Ra. Or tell Ra they're there, which would be just as bad (from their point of view) and no guarantees either way that Ra wouldn't simply destroy Nagada. If Ra exists here.

 _‹"Argos,"›_ Daniel says.

Dani sits up so fast she bangs her head on the roof of the holding pen. _‹"Because that worked out so well the last time?"›_ she asks, trying to keep her voice low and even. She sits back, making a face and rubbing her forehead.

_‹"If there are Goa'uld here -- active -- and we have a good idea -- now -- that there probably are -- Argos might still be in Pelops' domain, and Pelops is probably just as dead here as … elsewhere. The aging nanites were spread by sexual contact, so we'd be safe. And we know where the controls for the device are. We can smash them."›_

"If" and "maybe" and "perhaps" (and Dani's not as certain as she thinks Daniel is that the _Goa'uld_ are a current active presence). But the Argosians are (might be) friendly, and if history here runs at all the same as the histories they know, no other _Goa'uld_ came to take possession of Argos after Pelops wandered off (she ponders, momentarily, the _Tok'ra's_ fanatical insistence that the _Goa'uld_ were incapable of research, invention, creation, when they were constantly tripping over _Goa'uld_ \-- Pelops, Thanatos, Nirrti, Ba'al, Anubis -- who were far too creative and inventive. The party line, she supposes, never matches up with truth). They'll be safe (if they're careful) on Argos (and the same isn't true in The Land of Light, with its lovely histamylitic virus). And they need a destination, and Argos is marginally better than any other place they know an address for. They don't need to stay, either. By their current standards, the Argosians are rich: they could take enough things away with them from Argos to make a decent start somewhere else. And going to Argos at all (even though it's a desperate choice of last resort) will give them at least a _little_ more information about the _Goa'uld_ here. She nods slowly, knowing they don't have a lot of options.

 _‹"So all we need to do is get out of here, get to the Gate, and dial,"›_ she says, making as much of a joke out of the near-impossible as she can. A five mile run to the Gate, she's guessing, based on the coach's speed and travel time. Too bad they don't have the faintest idea of which direction to run in.

 _‹"Should be easy enough,"›_ Daniel says. _‹"Wait for our chance and take it."›_

Dani forces herself to smile. Easy enough. Business as usual. (For SG-1, and she hasn't felt this homesick in a very long time. It feels oddly like panic, and she misses Jack -- oh god, _Jack_ \-- with a sharp immediacy indistinguishable from physical pain.)

#

It's a long time later -- long enough for Dani to get hungry, and thirstier, and thoroughly bored, and to piss the corner of her cage with more irritation than shame -- before people come back. She's tired, but she's grimly resisted the temptation to sleep; she's never fallen asleep while she was standing watch and she never will. Daniel is sleeping, exhausted. Being tasered in the balls and then half-drowned will have that effect. She's glad -- more than that, _grateful_ \-- that he's still alive. If their only value lies in being a set, surely Ixis will want to keep them both alive, not just one of them, but Ixis doesn't seem to really care. That bothers her. Always -- before -- when she was a prisoner, she had some idea of her value to her captor. Or in places like Hadante, like Netu, she'd been valueless, and she'd known it, but the others had been there, and all they'd needed to do was escape. But the others are dead (unborn) here, and Dani doesn't know what the guiding principles of this new prison are.

When she hears the door open, she wakes Daniel. He's sitting up as the two men walk across the room toward their cages. Their new zookeepers are wearing finer clothes than the last set. They're also wearing collars like Rashul's. They're slaves. (Dani wonders if the six men she and Daniel encountered first are freemen, since they weren't wearing collars, or if all slaves don't necessarily wear collars all the time.) Each of them is carrying a short truncheon. One opens both cage doors while the other stands back. She crawls out, unable to manage a graceful exit from the cage's cramped quarters. Daniel does the same. He's a little stiff, but he's steady on his feet now.

"You will come with us," one of the men says.

"Where are we going?" Dani asks. Talk to them. Make them talk to you. To gather information, to make them see you as a person, to piss them off; there are so many useful reasons to get in the Bad Guys' faces, and Jack had never wanted her to. (Jack knew how fragile human bodies were; once it had been his business to know.) And what Dani hates more than everything else -- a dull simmering rage burning just at the edge of awareness -- is that being in this place makes her think constantly about Jack. Unhealed scar. Unquiet grave.

"You must be cleaned before you can be interviewed."

The two of them look at each other (and yeah, fine, this time _she's_ the one covered in dried piss, but it's not as if anybody came and offered them basic amenities, now, is it? Even the _Goa'uld_ prison cells -- known and loved the galaxy over -- are more user-friendly than this. Of course, the _Goa'uld_ almost always let them keep their _clothes_ …)

"Please comply readily. Your behavior will be corrected if you become willful. Correction is painful and unpleasant." The guards sound like extras in a bad science fiction movie, Dani thinks, and wishes there were someone here to share the joke with; Daniel's sense of humor is enough different from hers that the same things don't necessarily strike them both as funny. She wishes -- for that matter -- that this was funny.

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell us what that involves?" Daniel asks (doing his job just as she has done hers, and she doesn't think his dead sleep any more quietly than hers do).

The guard who hasn't gotten a speaking part in this movie raises his truncheon and steps toward Daniel. She jumps forward -- toward Daniel this time, and not their captors -- and as a result, gets the point of the truncheon in the back. It seems to pack much the same kind of punch as Ixis's ring -- not quite as intense, but the shock throws her into Daniel's arms and her forehead slams into his shoulder.

"Avoid that," she gasps, when she can breathe again.

"Come," truncheon-guard says.

They're brought back to the same room where Daniel was taken last night (he confirms it when she catches his eye with an imperceptible eyebrow-raise and head-dip). It's a tiled room with drains in the floor and a variety of flexible hoses hanging down from the ceiling like tentacles, and she doesn't care if he said that all they did was hose him down here, wash and rinse, this room looks as if it holds far too many disturbing possibilities. It also holds opportunity (they're both aware of it; there's no need for them to speak). There aren't any reinforcements waiting for them here, and their two guards are carrying weapons, but they're slaves, and if there's one thing that she and Daniel understand, it's the slave mentality. Most of all (really, down deep inside), slaves expect other slaves to think the same way they do . The two of them aren't likely to get a better chance.

The guards motion to them to move toward the back wall. They start forward, then Daniel turns, punching one of the guards. In the throat, not the jaw -- Jack always said hit the hard parts with a utensil and the soft parts with your fist -- the memory flickers across Dani's mind like summer lightning as she grabs for the truncheon the guard's carrying. By the time the second guard starts to react, she has the weapon. No controls of any kind, just touch-and-zap. The fight is over quickly, and both of the guards are down and unconscious (or dead; she doesn't fucking care, actually). They search and strip the bodies quickly -- tunics only, they don't have time for more, and the tunic comes to mid-thigh even on Daniel (which means nothing else would fit, and Rashul was only wearing a tunic). The guards are carrying nothing but the truncheons -- no keys.

Out into the hall, back past the cage room. There's no one in sight, so they run. They aren't sure how long their keepers will be unconscious (she touched each of them one last time on the temple with the truncheon -- for luck -- as they lay on the floor and didn't check their pulses after that). Out across the courtyard. There are people in the courtyard this time; they've been seen now.

_Clock's ticking, Dani._

_Yes, Jack._

The courtyard is fashioned as two colonnaded buildings facing each other. Each end of the courtyard is walled off to the full three-story height of the flanking buildings, and there are no doors or gates in the end walls. Dani thinks she can find her way back to the skylight room, and she knows they were brought _in_ through it, but the exit door has to lead to whatever place the coach was brought into and that might be an interior stables and _they are running out of time._ They have only minutes to get out of the building, or to find better weapons, or something. The building containing the (probable) entrance has several ground-floor doors -- wooden, carved, ornate. The first two they try -- the ones that Dani thinks are the most likely to lead back to the skylight room -- are locked. The third one isn't. Dani yanks it open. Daniel enters first.

Her heart sinks when she sees where they are. A hallway -- carpet, artwork, statuary -- nothing like the corridor she remembers, but there has to be more than one way out of this place, doesn't there? A servant holding a laden tray comes out of a side-room, and Daniel sweeps his truncheon up, striking the man beneath the jaw. The man convulses, flails, falls back through the doorway. Dani passes Daniel, running ahead. There's a closed door at the end of the hallway. She struggles to figure out how to open it. There's no handle or locking mechanism that she can see -- anywhere -- but it won't _move._ Daniel joins her, guarding her back.

Five seconds is long enough to waste. They need to find another route. She turns back, opening her mouth to tell Daniel her decision. He's walked a few feet back up the corridor and is standing rigid, braced, and beyond him, she sees Ixis is standing in the center of the corridor. Rashul is behind Ixis, peering timidly around his shoulder. There's a boy standing beside him. The boy looks about ten. He's wearing a collar, too.

She walks up to stand beside Daniel (he needs to know they don't have any way out) and slides her eyes sideways to look at his face. He looks stubborn, but not confident. They might -- _might_ \-- be able to take out Ixis with the truncheons, even kill him. Doing that might buy them the time to find a way out of this building (find the Stargate). But they can't be certain that Ixis is the ultimate authority here. And they've seen some evidence of high technology, but not enough to be able to consistently predict what they'll be dealing with.

"Stop now." Ixis says. "While you are valuable to me, my patience is limited."

"Save us all some trouble, then. Let us go," Daniel suggests.

"I understand that enslavement is difficult for the wild-caught to accept," Ixis says calmly (just as if 'enslavement' were an ordinary word). "I do not normally deal in your sort. But you are a true rarity. You must learn to accept your good fortune."

Daniel makes a derisive noise. _Yeah, like that'll happen._

Her message delivered, Dani's backed up the way she came by slow half-steps. It's old habit, born of a thousand purposes: to conceal what she's doing, to be able to back her teammate's play (when he makes it), to make whoever's watching them at the time have to split their attention. That's why she's close enough to the door (the _damned_ door, and why wouldn't it open?) to feel it when it starts to move inward. She throws her weight against it and she can't halt its movement.

#

Twenty-four days.

It's been twenty-four days since they left Saarsabah, and Dani almost thinks that staying there, being arrested, being executed, might not have been that bad. She sits on the floor outside the Enhancing Lab, against the wall, with her knees drawn up. She rests her chin on her knees and does not listen _(to the sounds coming from the next room)_ , does not think _(about what they mean)_. If she does neither one, she won't learn anything new.

That's important.

It's important not to know things, because what you don't know, you can't show that you know. What you don't know, you can't react to.

Slaves are permitted a limited palette of emotions. Anger is not among those permitted, nor is grief, and they are not allowed to show fear unless they are specifically directed to express it. Curiosity -- while not precisely an emotion -- is strongly discouraged, along with all forms of initiative _(defiance, rebellion)_. She thinks of the Jaffa, conjures darkness and candleflames and a state of no-mind out of imagination; a single image without memory and association, focusing her mind on it, letting everything in her true surroundings wash over and through her. ( _'Careful. We don't want to learn from this.'_ ) With the ease of long practice she banishes the memory-ghost before it makes its way fully into her consciousness.

A sarcophagus can heal any injury (even death can be considered to be an injury, at least if you're a _Goa'uld_ ) without a scar, and Ixis would be a poor businessman if he offered sub-standard merchandise when he had the option of doing otherwise. The solution _(an elegant one, really)_ is simply to cut away all the flawed and damaged portions of the product and throw what's left into the sarcophagus. What comes out is flawless. And if you do the cutting bit by bit, piece by piece, day after day, sooner or later the product gets the idea: cooperation is a very _very_ good idea.

This morning Daniel did something of which Ixis did not approve. This afternoon Daniel will go into the sarcophagus. There is a time between. ( _It's chess, jackstraws, hopscotch, horseshoes, avoiding the times between. Nothing more. Nothing other._ )

It took Ixis's chief Enhancer, a woman named Prisaphe, ten days to cut away all the old scar tissue on Dani's body, even the parts that ran deep into muscle, _(fourteen days ago, days one through ten in their new lives)_. She'd screamed until her throat was raw _(knowing Daniel could hear, unable to keep herself silent)_. Ixis hadn't cared. It wasn't torture for information, not torture for vengeance, not torture for punishment. It wasn't torture at all. Just pain. Pain as a tool.

She remembers, she remembers: waking up. Whole, unmarked. _(She doesn't remember which time: she remembers shattered bones: she remembers skin ripped away: she remembers skin running red with blood.)_ The last time she'd had that euphoric sense of well-being -- and that sharpness of vision _sans_ glasses -- she was going into Shy'lac's sarcophagus twice a day and slowly losing her mind. She wasn't upset, she wasn't worried -- she knew she ought to be, and that the fact that she wasn't was entirely due to the sarcophagus. Everything about her situation struck her as wildly funny _(in the grip of sarcophagus-rapture, and the only thing she came to fear as the days passed -- far more than she dreaded the sessions beneath Prisaphe's tools -- was the day when they would be over and she wouldn't get to go back into that golden hellbox again)_, because she would have told Ixis nearly anything he'd asked her, and he'd wanted to know so little...

They'd both told him everything he'd wanted to know.

But they still fought back. Even when they found out that what's outside Ixis's compound is nothing but ice and snow _(no other buildings in sight, and they've been in third floor rooms in both buildings now; they've seen a fair amount of the countryside)_ , and the Stargate is at least an hour away _(not visible from the house)_. It's not their first barbeque: to escape they know they'd need to neutralize Ixis and his staff and at least some of the slaves _(there are at least a hundred people here)_ , figure out the house security systems _(which may-or-may-not call for help if there's trouble)_ , find transportation, and _find the Stargate._ Not to mention getting their slave collars off -- and that's probably the first thing they'd have to do, not the last, because they aren't silver collars like the 'good' slaves wear, but in heavy black collars that can deliver either a painful corrective shock, or a variety of drugs _(they both know this for a fact)_. Ixis says the collars can kill them, too, something neither of them sees any particular reason to doubt.

They've been in more hopeless situations. _(But that was Before.)_

Ixis wants to prepare them for sale. Ixis doesn't appreciate their lack of enthusiasm for their new life. Sometimes he calls it 'disappointing him' and sometimes he says they aren't 'exerting their full capability' and sometimes he merely says they're 'willful' and must be 'encouraged.' It's always for their own good, though, and there are two kinds of thugs in the Universe: the kind that torture you for your own good and the kind that torture you for--

She stops her thoughts abruptly. There is no torture. There are no thugs. There are no sounds coming from the next room. _(She will see Daniel again and he will be whole and unmarked.)_ There is only the flame of the candle filling her mind, leaving no room for anger _(an anger she could not conceal)._

Slaves have no privacy in body or mind. Impermissible emotions, like forbidden actions, are punished. Anger is impermissible. Anger is difficult to conceal. Knowledge causes anger. Don’t listen. Don't think. Don't _know._ Survive. It's what slaves do.

Ixis thinks he's punishing both of them. But one of them can escape.

#

Forty days.

The only thing that makes any of this possible (in some ways, in others, it's one of the least tolerable things about it) is that Ixis has less interest in her feelings or in Daniel's than either of them would have in the imagined emotional lives of their scribes' cases. Because if either of them had ever possessed a pet cat, they would have cared whether it was happy, as well as whether it was healthy and well-fed. And Ixis really doesn't give a flying fuck whether they're ecstatically happy or suicidally depressed. To Ixis, she and Daniel are _objects_. Ixis is perfectly capable of understanding that the only thing differentiating him from them is a legal fiction and a stroke of fate, and _not caring_. She tries to keep Daniel from thinking about it, because the thing she worries about most (when she allows herself to think about anything but the immediate moment) is that Daniel will rebel in some terrible ultimate way. If he does, Ixis will kill him. Without Daniel, she has no value. If she could be utterly certain that Ixis would only kill them -- either of them, both of them -- the future wouldn't frighten her the way it does. Ixis's unflappable benign paternalism is more disturbing than any amount of posturing and threats. He's confident that even they, freeborn (wild caught, and she will not allow herself to know how much she despises that label), will come to accept their collar and cage. She wonders how many do.

She knows the answer.

Slavery is a concomitant of the need for physical labor (and a laboring class) in most pre-modern cultures -- slavery, contract labor, indentured servitude, there are a hundred different forms and style of it throughout the cultures and history of Earth and in the cultures she (once upon a time) studied on her trips through the Stargate. It doesn't stop there: Jund had slavery, both in the workhouses, where 'criminals' labored for the enrichment of the Frajurkindred, and in the culture at large. Saarsabah had it: people at Mimlal's level hadn't been able to afford to own servants, but that didn't mean the practice didn't exist. Daniel had seen more of it -- of them -- at the bathhouse. Prostitution is the oldest and most traditional form of slavery there is. Where there is slavery, there is the economic architecture of slavery: slave-markets and slave-dealers and (depending on the culture) slave-farms or slave-raiders or sometimes both. From his remarks about 'wild caught', Dani thinks that most of the slaves Ixis deals in -- perhaps the majority of the slave-trade for this network of worlds -- are bred in captivity. But Ixis deals in high-end goods. Uniques. Exotics.

She and Daniel are unique and exotic _(but only as a set)._ It's been enough to keep them alive so far. But the longer they're here _(in captivity)_ , the more exacting the rules they have to follow become.

The penalty for failure, for rebellion, remains constant.

#

One morning, in a brief few minutes when nobody is paying any particular attention to her (they're rare, but they happen), Dani reaches up to rub the spot on her shoulder where the gunshot scar is. Where the gunshot scar _was_ , because it isn't there now (not for a long time), and she wonders how different she looks now. There are no mirrors here anywhere. She hasn't thought about that for a long time -- about Before-and-Now -- but suddenly, even though it's dangerous, she can't stop, even as she can't stop tracing the phantom outline of a nonexistent scar. Once when she'd gone through the Gate, some primitive tribesmen had shot her in the shoulder with a flintlock rifle (they weren't as primitive as all that: they'd had gunpowder). The bullet had broken her collarbone, and shattered, and pieces of it had gone all the way through, and later Janet told her how lucky she was, because if the bullet hadn't shattered, her arm would have been blown off. Now the scar is gone, and the memory of how she got it has been buried beneath the memory of Prisaphe cutting to mark a square of skin, peeling it back, ripping it away, and then digging into the tissue beneath with a knife. She runs her fingers over her unmarked skin, and down deep inside she's frightened, in a profound and abstract way, of not being _her_ any more, because she's afraid she's being turned into someone, some _thing_ else, and maybe that person won't remember that the secrets she has are important and must be kept.

#

Sixty days.

Their day begins as days always do now. The lights in their room brighten. A few moments later there's the sound of a chime. When the chime sounds, they're allowed to leave the room. The doors don't lock in the slave quarters. (It's never mattered, since their collars are programmed to deliver agonizing levels of pain if they leave their room when they're not supposed to.) A second chime a few minutes later indicates they _must_ leave their room (everything not compulsory is forbidden). Outside the door they separate; the inventory is segregated by sex, and technically Daniel belongs on the floor below (Ixis isn't kind, just practical). Dani goes to perform her morning ablutions and put on a fresh house tunic. The cut is slightly longer, and the material slightly more opaque than the one she saw Rashul wearing that first day. It's a stock item, as generic as hospital scrubs, neither her property (inventory cannot own property), nor intended specifically for her.

The lavatory/washroom for female inventory is enormous and austere (it would remind Dani of her dorm bathroom at UCLA if she allowed herself to think about the past), More extensive and more luxurious grooming is done in the Enhancement Lab; it isn't all cutting tables and sarcophagus. Sometimes visiting the Enhancement Lab is a reward. Sometimes it's just good business practice.

Right now there are sixteen (including her) in female inventory. The others are truly exotic: fur, scales, hair and eye and skin colors that Dani's never seen. A set of female twins with milk-pale skin and violet eyes who speak only in chorus (Yuaine and Fenis). A woman nearly seven feet tall, muscled like-- _(don't think about that)_ \--whose skin is as black as Rashul's (Trias). Another woman with skin the color of cinnamon and eyes that are almost red: her hair is only a shade or two darker than her skin, and kept in hundreds of tiny braids (Isana). She's beautiful (they're all beautiful here, except Dani), but there doesn't seem to be anything really exotic about her, except, perhaps, the fact that she always seems to be moving in a cloud of glorious _smell_. It's like sugar cookies and fresh bread and chocolate, and like none of them at all.

They all wear silver collars (not like hers, not like Daniel's; theirs, Dani thinks, are nothing more than inert circlets of metal, symbols of their status). They're all slaves, born to slaves. They don't want anything to do with one of the wild caught (Dani's not surprised; snobbery isn't the exclusive province of the rich) and anyway, talking about anything that happened before she came here is on the list of Ixis's prohibitions.

When the next chime sounds, it's time to go to the dining room, unless Cloree or one of the other house staff comes and gives one of them different orders. (Any of the house staff, slave or free, can give them orders. The slaveborn know without having to think about it who's allowed to give them orders, but the social conventions are impenetrable to an outsider, and she'd had to ask. Ixis had explained, but that had been after she'd received Correction for refusing to obey.) Today no one is summoned.

All the slaves -- inventory and house staff both -- eat in the dining room. Either the freemen in Ixis's employ eat elsewhere (or at another time) or Temran and the others were only hired for that one job. She thinks it's more likely that she just doesn't see them. It makes sense for there to be at least a few security people psychologically capable of opposing the will of the freeborn.

The food is palatable and plentiful. Of course it is. And when the next chime sounds, it's time for lessons. She and Daniel have lessons now (Ixis hadn't wanted to know about the languages they knew, back at the beginning; he'd wanted to know if they could dance). They've had lessons -- hours of them -- since they've become more cooperative: in standing, walking, sitting, mounting and dismounting from the auction block. How to carry a tray with poise, to kneel to offer it, to hold it steady as they rise to their feet, to back out of a room without tripping.

They've received lessons in sex as well. Not in giving or receiving pleasure. Ixis doesn't give a rat's ass if sex is pleasurable for a slave, and he isn't selling them as sex slaves, but as _breeding slaves_. No, the whole point is for them to be able to fuck prettily for an audience. She's been terrified -- ever since she understood that Ixis expects them to have sex in public and with each other -- that this is the thing that will make Daniel balk in a way that no amount of Correction will alter. (He hasn't said so. But then, they haven't had to do it yet.) But they are property -- neither as young nor as beautiful as Ixis's other living (human) wares -- their value lies in their genetic co-identity. When Ixis offers them for sale one of his selling points (perhaps the greatest one) will be that they can be used as a breeding pair _(Dani's been capable of conception since her first trip through his sarcophagus, and the shock of that is something she's pushed down deep; she will not let Daniel see how much that horrifies her or why.)_ It's almost certain that their buyer will expect to breed them to each other to see the result. (Breeding pair or not, their bodies are not their own; they are being polished and trained to make them desirable sale items, and Ixis has made no secret of the fact that slaves must have sex: gracefully, beautifully, on command.)

Despite knowing this (even after knowing this) they've stopped fighting their enslavement (and Dani prays for this state of being to continue as she'd once prayed for escape or for death). Not because Ixis has broken them (either of them). Not because they're afraid of pain, brutalization, dehumanization.

No.

They begin to cooperate because if escape from here is all-but impossible (and it is: too many variables, no team, no allies, no safe haven to flee to), human nature is a constant. Eventually Ixis will sell them. And he will lie to whoever buys them Not a lot. Only as much as he's sure he can get away with. He'll lie about their submissiveness, their docility, about how thoroughly these two _magnificent genetically-identical wild-caught slaves_ have accepted their captivity, even revel in it. (How much they look forward to providing their new owner with fascinating offspring.)

That's when they'll escape. (That's the hope that's keeping them alive, but waiting for that moment is so very hard.) A private house _has_ to have less formidable security than a slaver's compound. If their luck has changed for the better, they'll be sold somewhere low-tech with a Stargate they can easily reach. If their luck merely continues on its merry way … they should at least be able to get their hands on something to kill themselves (each other) with in their lovely new home. _Dal shakk'a mel._ Teal'c's proudest claim. _I die free._ If Dani cannot have that for herself, she will not breed slaves.

This morning Hescard comes to the dining room just before the second chime (she knows it's Hescard by the gleam of silver at his throat, and by the fact he's wearing both tunic and trousers in House Ixis colors; without her glasses -- and she doesn't have her glasses -- images grow ever-fuzzier with distance; not being able to _see_ made her especially clumsy until she learned to compensate). Hescard is Master Ixis's Chief of Staff (for lack of a better word), and while he's a slave, Dani's never seen him in the dining room. Property (inventory, _slaves_ ) are not supposed to gawk around themselves, no matter what's going on; Dani sees him enter the room and go to where Daniel's sitting out of the corner of her eye (inventory is segregated for meals, bringing back uncomfortable memories of Oraustard), but she keeps her face forward, her chin tilted down. Daniel stands (gracefully) and walks toward the door, and Dani flicks her eyes back to her plate and behaves as if she hasn't seen anything, because Hescard is walking toward female inventory.

"Danielle, attend," he says, stopping at the end of the table.

She gets to her feet (gracefully), leaving her dishes where they are. The kitchen slaves will clean up. Inventory does not do chores. (Inventory does a lot of things here, but it does not do chores.) When Hescard walks away, she follows, hands clasped in front of her, neck bowed, eyes downcast. (He didn't need to tell her to follow him; he'd told her to 'attend'.) When they pass through the doorway, Daniel falls into step beside her (hands at his sides, neck bowed, eyes downcast). They don't speak, and they don't look at each other, or acknowledge each others' presence in any way. They don't speak to Hescard, either. That's against the rules (not _speaking_ to Hescard in general, but there are few situations in which it's appropriate, and even fewer in which it's appropriate for inventory-property-slaves to speak first).

They leave the building and cross the courtyard. The courtyard isn't really outside, but its as close as inventory gets (its as close as most inventory _wants_ to get). Being allowed into the courtyard is a privilege; it's free (unregulated) time. Neither she nor Daniel has been allowed into the courtyard yet, so Dani doesn't know what rules apply to it.

They go in on the private side, not the intake side. There isn't much on the intake side, anyway, just holding and processing areas for Master Ixis's other business, exotic animals. That's what the cages she and Daniel spent their first night in were actually meant for. The collars they wear are meant for animals, too. (The carriage house and stables and -- therefore -- an exit to the outside world are on the intake side as well, but Dani's stopped thinking about them a long time ago.)

The carpets are softer and finer here than in the inventory building (the other building is entirely reserved for inventory). Her feet are soft and tender now, and the carpet feels good on her feet. Behind the door that defeated her attempts to open it the day she and Daniel attempted to escape (there was no particular technology involved; it simply bolts on the other side), there's a staircase. There are very few possible places Hescard can be taking them. She's been here before.

Master Ixis is waiting for them in his study (she thinks it might be a fascinating place -- he even let her gaze around herself freely once, when she was in here -- but the walls and the shelves are too far away from his chair for her to be able to be certain of what they contain). Atini is sitting beside his chair. She takes in the room with a quick flick of her eyes -- keeping her head down -- then focuses her gaze on Hescard's hands. The slaves have hand-signals that they can use for relaying basic commands, so that they don't have to speak in the presence of their owners (Hescard could have told them what they'd need to do here while they were walking over -- he knows that the hand-language doesn't come naturally to them -- but Hescard is always happy to see them make a mistake requiring correction).

Hescard signals 'stop' as they pass through the doorway, and say what you will about slavery, there are rules to cover every situation (including the situations for which there are no rules); she and Daniel step into the room, place themselves so they aren't blocking the door, and wait as Hescard walks forward and presents himself. Hescard isn't inventory; Hescard has household privilege, so he stops far enough away from Master Ixis that he doesn't need to kneel.

"Daniel. Danielle. Come here," Master Ixis says, so they do. He flicks his fingers, dismissing Hescard; Hescard moves to the middle of the room and stands quietly until he can back out of the room without getting in their way.

Master Ixis is sitting, so they kneel in front of him (a move it took her forever to master, sinking to her knees _slowly_ , while keeping her hands clasped in front of her, her back straight, and her neck bent). It isn't made any easier by the fact that Master Ixis motions them even closer when they're halfway down (and Every. Single. Place. they could kneel on the floor has a technical term; they've just been promoted from the Degree of Respect to the Degree of Intimacy). Not only do they manage it, they manage it _in fucking unison_ but she keeps the triumph she feels off her face (property's expression must be pleasant, yet dignified and reserved, at all times).

"How are my good children this morning?" Master Ixis asks. He's pleased (she can hear it in his voice). It's a direct question, so they answer it.

"Very well, Master Ixis." They both speak at once. They're being prepared for sale as a set, so that means _synchronized_.

"And you've been so good lately. 'Property must trust and obey' -- those are words to live by. You see, now, that I've always had your best interests at heart."

It isn't a direct question, so they aren't supposed to speak. On the other hand, they _are_ supposed to acknowledge that a master has spoken. She lowers her chin another fraction toward her chest. It makes it impossible to see what's going on above her. She hears a rustling as Ixis shifts position. He places a hand beneath her chin, lifting her head until she's gazing into his eyes. It doesn't matter what he's looking for. Dani Jackson isn't home right now. _Dani_ is far from here, on a planet circling a star whose light won't reach here for thousands of years, standing beside a man she will not name, and she wants him to hold her and lie to her and tell her everything's going to be all right, but he's dead. Unborn. (No. Dead. She's seen him die, over and over and over and over and over and--)

_Don't think._

_It's dangerous to think._

_Master Ixis will know._

He smiles at her (fond and affectionate and paternal) and releases her chin, and she's lowering her head again (demure and proper) when he reaches to the side, and back again, and then he's pressing something at her lips. She smells sugar and opens her mouth obediently and he pushes the candy inside. Soft and round, and the texture's like chocolate but the taste isn't (quite). She can't remember the last time she had a piece of candy.

Ixis strokes her cheek, and pats it lightly, then smoothes his hand down over her hair. When he rests his hand on the nape of her neck and presses, she leans forward (gracefully) and rests her cheek on his knee. From this position she can look at Daniel without doing anything incorrect. Daniel is kneeling with his hands clasped behind his back (she _still_ thinks it's unfair that men are allowed to kneel with their arms at their sides -- it's so much easier -- but rules are rules), and his head bowed. Daniel doesn't receive the same inspection she did (she wonders, for just an instant, what Ixis was looking for, then tucks the thought away), but he does get a piece of candy. Afterward, Ixis runs his fingers along the front of Daniel's collar. It's the same as hers: thick and black (more like rubber than like leather; not much like either), inset with a line of dull pewter-colored rectangles that run all the way around the band. She's inspected both hers and Daniel's as thoroughly as she could. You can't tell by touch where the rectangles are.

"I think the two of you may be my finest creation," Ixis says, as if he's talking to himself. "Certainly you are my greatest beneficence. It would have been truly wicked to leave you in the wild. What could you have done there but starved and died? Instead, you will become the prized possessions of someone who has the taste and refinement to appreciate what wonders you are. Daniel? Speak. You must know by now that I have never been unjust in my treatment of either of you."

"Yes, Master Ixis, I know," Daniel answers. "We are both aware of how fortunate we are to be here. And we -- and I -- am grateful for your patience."

She is careful -- so careful -- not to hear the words Daniel does not say.

"My finest creation," Ixis says again. "Oh, not perfect yet. But you will be. I shall not fail you, my children, by allowing you to be anything less. But for now ... yes. It is time to dispense with these hideous badges of shame and failure. Atini, bring the tray."

"Yes, Master Ixis," Atini says.

Master Ixis goes back to stroking her hair. The way you'd pet a cat that was asleep on your lap. He bends Daniel forward too. Daniel's taller than she is and longer in the torso; his head rests higher on Master Ixis's thigh than hers does. His breaths (slow, regular, calm) tickle her hair. (Daniel's hair is longer now than she's ever seen it; he's always kept it short.) She lets her eyes unfocus, concentrating all of her attention on Master Ixis, but he seems perfectly content just to sit with a lap full of ... them ... until Atini comes back.

When he does, Master Ixis says, "Up," and they sit back (the command to get to their feet is "Rise"). She knows Atini's here, but he's outside the range of her peripheral vision (Atini was born into slavery; he has an understanding of what to do and when and how to do it that Dani knows she'll never equal). Master Ixis leans forward to reach past her shoulder (she doesn't react) and settles back holding something too small for her to see in the brief moment when his hand is in sight. He puts both hands on her throat (on the collar), pushing her head up and back with the indifference and unconcern of someone who's working on something important and simply doesn't notice. There's about thirty seconds of fiddling (one heartbeat-swift jolt of Correction, intense enough to make her twitch and gasp), and then the collar is open. Master Ixis pulls it wide and removes it, then reaches past her again (setting it on the tray), pauses to place another piece of candy in her mouth, then opens Daniel's collar.

She wants to raise her hands to her neck, to touch skin that's been chafed and covered for sixty days, to turn and watch what he does to Daniel. She doesn't move.

Daniel's collar is removed. Daniel is similarly rewarded with a second piece of candy. (Dani concentrates on breathing slowly and carefully; if she doesn't she might break into hysterical laughter and say things about lollipops and visits to the doctor's office.) When Master Ixis places Daniel's collar on the tray (Daniel got his candy quicker than she got hers, but she's known for a long time that Master Ixis likes Daniel best of the two of them, and _why is she even bothering to notice or care about things like that?_ ) he removes two silver bands from it.

The silver collars everyone (for values of 'everyone' meaning 'property') wears look like plain flat circles, but they aren't. They're shaped (lower in front, higher in back, a little flared) so that they'll fit snugly around the base of the throat. They look like solid pieces of metal, but when Master Ixis picks one of them up (the smaller one; hers) suddenly it's open.

"When you go to your true master, he will place his collar upon you," Master Ixis says, holding up her collar. "And when that happy day comes, you will wear the collar of a House at last, as I believe you were truly born to. Wear this now, and dream of that day." He gestures, she leans forward, and he slides the collar around her neck so that the opening is at the front. The silver is cool. He brings the ends together, and the collar closes with a soft click. Her neck feels very light.

In seconds, Daniel is collared (re-collared) as well. Ixis kisses each of them upon the mouth (chastely, at least hers is). Then he tells them to rise and go to their lessons. It's a long way across the room, and they have to back to the door without bumping into each other and in a straight line. They succeed.

They don't speak as they walk from the private quarters and across the courtyard again. It's not forbidden, but she can't think of anything to say that wouldn't earn both of them correction if it was overheard. Apparently, Daniel can't either.

What she hates most of all is that what she felt -- in those few moments she wore no collar at all...

Was panic.

#

Seventy days.

Seventy days isn't long, in one sense. Less than three months. Less than a season. It all depends on how you measure it. It's a lifetime (for example) if you measure it by trips through a sarcophagus. And the need for them.

Days and days pass now without either of them receiving a correction. When they do receive them, they're only minor ones, and only for clumsiness. Not for rebellion. Not for disobedience.

They don't disobey.

Master Ixis says there's a trade fair coming up in a month (Dani still isn't sure how long a month is here on Nerial) somewhere called Gleinedin. He says that it's worth attending (more to buy than to sell, though some inventory may do well there (Triane and Autena -- Autena is another Helylin, like Rashul -- and Diranor, Leolan, and Godis from men's inventory) and he might take the two of them in order to give them practice on the block.)

He doesn't tell them these things because he feels they're owed an explanation for anything he chooses to do. He talks to them the way he'd talk to a pet. Expecting, perhaps, a little more comprehension. Expecting (always) pleasure at everything he says, no matter what it is.

He says they won't be finished and ready to sell for some time yet. Dani does her best not to think about how long "some time" might be. Slaves and prisoners have one thing in common. They don't dare live in any time but "now."

It's better not to think ahead.

#

_"Jack!"_

Daniel has managed to wake her up before she starts screaming -- it's the deal, their implicit bargain, the reason Ixis keeps them together instead of having Daniel sleep down in men's inventory -- but he hasn't managed to wake her soon enough (this time) to keep Jack's name off her lips.

She'd started screaming at night around Day Forty. Marloke is in charge of women's inventory on nights; Marloke tried everything to make her stop. Collar-correction. Drugs. She'd even spoken to Master Ixis, because nothing in women's inventory is soundproofed, and Dani could usually wake up at least a third of inventory (and then either stay awake the rest of the night -- which meant a day of constant Correction, exhausting her to the point that everyone would be up all night the next night -- or keep trying to sleep, which meant they'd be up all night that night). When Marloke spoke to Master Ixis, Dani'd ended up in the sarcophagus, but that had only kept her quiet for a day or two.

She doesn't know what Daniel had to do in order to be allowed to sleep in her room. He won't tell her.

"Shh. He's not here." Daniel shifts closer on the bed to hold her. (They try not to touch at night, most of the time, because they're not allowed to fuck. Not at night. Not alone.) She wants the comfort of being held, but she doesn't want to show how much she needs it, not even to Daniel. Need is vulnerability. It's dangerous to be vulnerable here.

"Dead," she says, her voice hoarse with sleep. It's unfair to hurt Daniel by saying the truth aloud. But she needs to remind herself, because otherwise her mind might begin to play games with her. Make her start to hope Jack is coming for her. Coming for _them._

She thought -- when they made the decision to outwait Ixis -- that if it wouldn't be easy, at least it would be _possible_. She's starting to wonder -- in the deepest corner of her mind, where she's sure Daniel can't see -- if she was right.

"Probably never born, actually," Daniel says. "Not here, anyway." He doesn't ask if it was bad. He knows it was bad. The ones where she wakes up screaming for Jack are the worst.

"Really?" she asks, despising the hope she hears in her voice. (If Jack was never born, he never died. Simple logic.)

"Well, if you consider how differently history on Earth here probably went, then ... yes. Never born. Or never joined the Air Force--" _(Is alive but never joined the Air Force, a telegraphic sentence-fragment collapsing paragraphs and eternities of quantum-mirror alternate-universe possibilities into a few words.)_

"Probably got a nice fishing boat somewhere," she says wistfully (giving up, hating herself, settling into his arms). "A nice wife, a houseful of kids--" _(Earth. Oh, god, Earth. Normalcy and freedom and even safety and everything she'd never noticed until it was gone forever.) _

Daniel huffs in bleak amusement, his chin pressed against the top of her head. She feels him turning the idea over in his head before he speaks. "A big hairy dog--"

It's a fantasy, yes, but not quite as dangerous as the one she knows her unconscious mind is contemplating _(believing that somehow SG-1 is out there, is coming for her, for them)_. Surely it's all right to think of someone they both love as being happy and free. Somewhere. "They play bridge with the neighbors on Saturday nights," she says.

"Bridge?" Daniel asks, sounding faintly disbelieving.

"His wife's idea," she explains (Jack, she knows, was married; she knows he'd loved Sara for a long time after the divorce, that he'd never stopped loving her, that despite the lives they'd all been forced to lead -- so long ago, so far away -- Jack is _(was)_ a man meant for marriage, for a home and a family).

"Oh. Well, she's a great cook, of course, and always takes two dishes to the potluck. One's a cake, obviously," Daniel says (accepting her fantasy seamlessly, elaborating on it, she will not wonder what Daniel knew of Jack in a universe she can never visit). Jack loved cake. Of course his wife would have to bake cakes. Chocolate ones, with lots of frosting (Dani decides), and the spice cake that Sammy used to make, the one with raisins in the batter and the crushed walnuts and candied orange peel on top. "And the other is the family recipe noodle casserole," Daniel finishes.

She yawns, comforted by his touch, the warmth of his body, the sound of his voice. _And it would have big pieces of chicken in it, and the noodles would be home made, and Jack would complain that she made the same thing every time, but he'd always eat two helpings._ "At Christmas, she bakes cookies for three weeks. And he takes the kids -- and the dog -- out into the woods to cut a tree. Every year he swears they're going to buy one instead, but they never do."

"The kids insist," Daniel says. (In this world they are creating, Charlie did not die. Charlie has brothers and sisters, as he was meant to have.)

"Family tradition," she agrees.

"And then -- on Christmas Eve -- they have an enormous dinner, and he tells the kids they can stay up to watch for Santa, but they all fall asleep by eleven o'clock. So then it's just the two of them, alone in front of the fire..."

She falls asleep again as he's telling her about a Christmas that never happened in the life of a man who doesn't exist.

#

Ninety days.

A lot of their lessons now have no use beyond the day they're offered for sale. Lison and Girant -- they're, for lack of any better term, their etiquette and deportment tutors -- have spent hours and days teaching her and Daniel how to move (gracefully) in the heavy manacles (archaic symbol) that they will wear on the block, designing a presentation piece to entice sophisticated and jaded buyers (they call them 'patrons' here), critiquing ever step, every gesture, every breath. Perfection, Lison has told her (told them), is their best chance of attracting a discerning patron, one who will value them properly. For once, Dani can decode the hidden message easily: they need to manage to be sold to someone rich, someone who will keep them, someone who will treat them as well as they are treated here, someone who won't resell them into a situation that is ... worse.

For the last five days, the entire household has been in a flurry of activity (as much as the well-oiled machine of Master Ixis's household ever flurries) with preparations. The fair will run three days. He's taking seven from inventory (including them, though they aren't really for sale) and ten from the household (including Rashul and Atini, who go everywhere with him). Inventory is being polished for presentation. It's a busy time.

The day before they're going to leave, she and Daniel are in the courtyard together. Since the day they won their silver collars from Master Ixis, they've been allowed the liberty of the courtyard sometimes. Male inventory and female inventory aren't segregated in the courtyard -- she and Daniel aren't the only male/female pair being prepared for sale -- so it isn't a transgression for them to be together and talk.

As long as they don't say anything ... unwise.

But when she says that this is the ninetieth day they've been in Master Ixis's house (she's always been the one who counted, from the first day they saw each other on P3R-233, and Daniel was always the one who said she counted wrong), Daniel makes a joke about their warranty expiring, and Dani laughs out loud. She's giddy from the sarcophagus. They both are. Three sessions in three days, long ones, not preceded by either Correction or Enhancement, and she's chirpy and effervescent and flying. Prisaphe says that's the limit without risking withdrawal _(physical withdrawal, anyway; every fucking time she gets a hit of immortality the craving wakes up again and it never -- never \-- really goes away)_ and Master Ixis doesn't want anything he sells to just collapse in a day or two, shaking and moaning. That wouldn't be good for business.

But oh, _god_. She can _see_ again, at least for a day or so, until the artificial perfection fades. Until then, everything is sharp and clear.

The euphoria, the sense of invincibility, will fade faster, thank fuck. There's too much possibility that she'll forget all the rules while she's high. And that would be a fucking _disaster._ Because Master Ixis is taking them offworld. Gleinedin is offworld. They're going through the Stargate again.

Everybody's said 'Gleinedin' and 'trade fair' for the last twenty days, but _property does not ask questions._ She and Daniel are wild-caught inventory, the lowest of the low -- below household property, below domestic-bred inventory -- and they don't dare fuck up. It was only a few days ago that she overheard Lison saying ' _on_ Gleinedin', and Daniel said (that night) that Godis said they'd be going through the Stargate (apparently Godis really hates going through the Stargate).

She won't think. Won't imagine. Won't plan. (Won't wonder what Daniel is thinking. Planning.)

The day they leave for Gleinedin, the inventory that's accompanying Master Ixis reports to the Enhancement Lab after breakfast to be thoroughly scrubbed. Afterward, they're given travel clothes (soft heavy knee-length tunics with hoods, soft ankle-high boots with thick soles) then taken to the carriages.

It's the first time they've been in the 'skylight room' since the day they were brought here. The door at the opposite end stands open. Though Master Ixis possesses technology beyond anything Dani's seen on Earth, they're going to Gleinedin by horse-drawn wagon. It's a different one than the one that brought her and Daniel here (still no windows, though), but there are padded seats, each long enough for four people (except the one by the door), and the seats and the ceiling and the walls are all padded in the same brocade, and the floor is carpeted. It looks like a Soccer Mom's mini-van designed by the _Goa'uld_. Three full seats and one half seat means room for fourteen people. All the seats aren't filled.

She and Daniel hold hands as the coach moves out. This time they aren't cold on the journey.

#

Sarcophagus means her allergies are held at bay for a day or two, thank fuck, because when the coach bumps _up_ and goes _through_ and bumps _down_ again, she can smell green growing things, and suddenly the temperature inside the coach is stifling. In a minute or two the heat stops, though, and it's comfortable. It's not quite as long as it was from the house to the Stargate until they stop, but nobody comes to open the door, so they just sit there (and sit, and _sit_ ). Finally Temran comes and opens the door (Dani quickly puts her hands back in her lap, where she's supposed to have had them all along). Household exits first -- Cloree, Jenone, and Vadian were riding with them -- then inventory. Descending the steps of the carriage _gracefully_ is hard, even though she's practiced, and only the sense-memory of innumerable Corrections keeps her moving forward.

Because there are two of the biggest, gaudiest, _circus tents_ she's ever seen in her life right in front of her. They're blue and silver brocade, and the day is bright and sunny, and they're _blinding_.

This must be what the wait was about. So that somebody could get those _tents_ put up. She takes a deep breath, and matches her steps to Daniel's (oh god she's so grateful that Autena and Leolan are ahead of them) and walks forward. Diranor and Godis follow. Triane walks alone (she always does, because otherwise it would throw off the composition). Jenone is holding open a flap of the larger tent for them. They walk through quickly. It's dark inside, and cooler, but Dani misses the sunlight. She doesn't remember ever seeing the sun on Nerial.

Her eyes adjust quickly, but she knows she'd miss the cues Cloree is giving (and Cloree has never tried to trick or mislead either of them) if not for the fact that the rest of the inventory catches them and cues her. She'd thought the tent was big from the front, but now that she's inside, she can see that it's even longer than it is wide. The inside is partitioned with pale blue curtains. There's one running the length of the tent, (or almost, because it runs into another pale blue curtain, and she isn't sure what's on the other side). Master Ixis is directing the household in the unpacking and preparations. Inventory is told to remove their travelling garments, after which they're let to relieve themselves (the lavatory and washroom is surprisingly large and elaborate for something in a tent) and given bottles of flavored water. Then they kneel at the side of the tent (out of the way) while the rest of the work gets done. Inventory does not work.

The blue curtains (she can see, even while holding position) conceal (in addition to the washroom) a sleeping room that is obviously for Master Ixis, a sleeping room for household and inventory both (six towers of bunks; it will hold eighteen but she bets Atini and Rashul won't be sleeping here), and a dining area. She desperately wishes she could _ask_ how all this stuff got here (did he bring it with him? If so, on how many wagons? Or did he rent it from Hertz Rent-a-Pavilion?) She focuses -- desperately -- on the image of a candleflame. She knows this is sarcophagus intoxication, combined with the frustration (the hope) of being so near to freedom. She doesn't dare let it show.

It's hours before everything is arranged to the household's satisfaction. Master Ixis isn't there for a lot of it. But when he comes back, they're fed (it's later than their usual midday meal, and she's hungry) and then Aryrcin comes to dress them. (Aryrcin is household, in charge of inventory presentation, and she and Daniel have never managed to please him, no matter what they do.) The tunics they're given to wear aren't house tunics. They're like Rashul's. Short. Sheer. (Fucking _transparent._ ) When they're all dressed, each of them is manacled; she and Daniel are being offered as a set, so their chaining is more elaborate (and Aryrcin has never been satisfied with how they move together in chains).

And Master Ixis looks at all of them possessively, but he looks at her and Daniel with pride.

After that, Temran and Aryrcin take inventory over to the sale tent for Master Ixis (he walks with them, of course, but he's a master and they're property, so of course he isn't doing any of the actual _work_ ). There's a carpet laid between the two tents for them to walk on, and she's glad of that; the grass looks soft, but her feet (now) are softer. There's a blue curtain between the back and the front of the tent.

"Daniel, Danielle," Master Ixis says, as they're about to kneel with the others. She follows Daniel's lead, and they go to stand at his side. (And not a link of the chain clinks, not that Aryrcin will appreciate that.) Master Ixis leads them through the curtain.

On the other side there are chairs. Tables.

The block.

Master Ixis stops them just inside the curtain and claps his hands together. "Show me, my darlings," he says. "Show me how you will display your gifts."

They pace forward -- slowly, carefully -- heads down (as they should be). They reach the platform and step up (in unison, in silence) and move to the center. They stop (not freezing into immobility, a relaxed stillness), and raise their heads ( _'you must let the potential patron see you, but do not be over-familiar,'_ Aryrcin said), fixing their gaze on the middle distance.

Master Ixis walks around the platform, regarding them (she assumes that's what he's doing; she can see movement, but she's looking through the far wall of the tent). He comes closer and puts a hand on her bare thigh, but she's braced for unexpected touch, and doesn't flinch.

"Good, good," he says. "Now. Off the back."

They step off the platform backward. In unison, but this isn't the platform they've practiced on, and this is one of their hardest moves. She bobbles, just a little. The chains clink, and her shoulder brushes Daniel's before she can steady herself.

"T't," Master Ixis says. He reaches out and cups her shoulder. The pang of Correction -- not as severe as it could have been -- jolts her sharply and she wants to cry, because she's _trying_ , she _is_....

"I would be thoughtless and cruel if I did not correct your imperfection, my child," Master Ixis says. "Is that not true, Danielle?"

"Yes, Master Ixis, that is true," she says. "Please forgive me."

"Why, Danielle, there is nothing to forgive. You are my good girl. Now off with you both."

They retreat behind the curtain, and kneel, and wait. For part of the time, Master Ixis is in the back with them, reclining on something that has no right to look that much like a La-Z-Boy. Sometimes he reads. Sometimes he works on something she'd swear was a laptop computer. Sometimes he walks off and disappears for hours.

They're called out onto the block three times, as day shades into night and later night. They're never instructed to make their full presentation; these are only casual buyers. Once someone makes an offer, but it's only for Daniel, and Ixis refuses to break the set.

Godis sells that night, though. He comes back through the curtain, and a little while later Atini comes and tells him that he has been sold. Atini and Sedabet (Sedabet was Master Ixis's boy before he got too old, but he still has a favored place in the household) dress him in a different tunic (as long and as heavy as a house tunic, but blue like the presentation tunics and of finer cloth) and give him a pair of sandals. Then Sedabet leads him out through the curtain again.

It's at least another hour before the sale day ends. They're all hungry and sleepy by the time Temran and Aryrcin lead them back to the house tent. Dinner is something like a box lunch, but it's good.

All day she's been worrying about waking everyone up with her nightmares, and thinking about escaping, and if they can, and how they'll do it. (The weather is warm here; the Stargate can't be far, and there has to be a path leading to it.) She doesn't need to worry about either one. The last thing that happens that night (after they've all washed up and are ready for their beds) is that Cloree hands each of them a cup. There's about three ounces of liquid in it (dark and syrupy, and it smells sweet and herbal), and there's nothing to do but drink it.

They all sleep soundly -- and dreamlessly -- until morning.

#

Second day at lovely Gleinedin Fair. Today and tomorrow are full days for them here (Dani knows because she's overheard household talking) and they leave on the following day. Gleinedin Fair runs (apparently) for hundreds of days, but it isn't really the sort of place that Master Ixis's wares fetch their best prices. She has the feeling he's here to check out the competition and pick up some bargains, if he can.

There's no privacy to talk to Daniel (no chance, either, in the few minutes of the morning routine where she could). And even if there were time, she couldn't talk to him about the things she wants to talk to him about. If Cloree is going to drug them senseless every night they're here (there must be a reason they don't use whatever-it-is regularly, or Marloke would certainly have used it on her when her screaming nightmares started) they can't sneak out during the night. They can't pretend to take the drink (it's not like a pill, and there's a lot of it). And they're watched every minute of the day.

It's painful to give up the hope of escape when they're so close. But a failed attempt would only put the day they can be sold (and gain their freedom one way or another) farther away than ever. But soon they will have been slaves for a hundred days, and she knows it's only an arbitrary number, but it feels like forever.

After breakfast and washing and tidying, they're dressed and manacled as they were yesterday, and walked over to the sale tent. She resigns herself to a long day of boredom. Uncomfortable boredom, too; kneeling in perfect position for so many hours is painful after a while. She'd almost welcome a trip or two to the block to break the monotony. They probably won't get lunch, either.

She's right about not getting lunch, but she's wrong about spending the whole day on her knees. Every few hours, Aryrcin has them all up on their feet and moving around for a few minutes. He checks to see if they're thirsty, and if they need to empty their bowels or bladders (there's a tiny utterly functional toilet in the back of the tent). But most of the day is spent sitting, staring at nothing.

No one is called for. Master Ixis is in and out, but Dani's already gotten the idea that the real action for his inventory starts after dark. He's there (though) in mid-afternoon (working on his might-be-a-laptop again) when he sits up as if he's suddenly heard something, and walks briskly through the curtain. A few minutes later, Atini comes through the curtain the other way. He's wearing sandals, and smells of sun and dust. She wrinkles her nose before she can stop herself.

"Master Ixis asks for the twins," he tells Aryrcin. (They aren't twins, but that's what most of the household calls them.)

She's decided by now that they just get shown off so Ixis can brag and the patrons can gawk, and then they can all get down to realistic business. But Atini is bouncing around so much that this time she wonders if it might be different. He guides them out through the curtain, and she's glad of that. She keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the ground in front of her now. She doesn't want to catch even a glimpse of the faces on the other side of the auction block until the very last minute.

Forward.

Step up. Settle. Count. On the third beat (because Daniel is counting, too, Daniel is counting in unison with her), Dani raises her head, trying to keep defiance out of her eyes.

Two men. Both standing.

_(One behind the other, to guard his back the way he always has, since that day, since the day when--)_

Her head jerks up further (she knows she's an inch from Correction now) and it's green BDUs and the gold mark of Apophis's First prime and cap and he's carrying a P90 and it's--

_(Teal'c)_

Jack.

It's Jack. _(dead he's dead no he's dead Jack is dead he's dead unborn no dead dead dead)_

Jack.

###


End file.
